2100
The gunfire in the streets is frequent and irregular. It sounds to him like the massive heart of the dying city trying to find its pulse.
There is nothing that Rotton can do now. He played his part and collected his fee. If he was smart, he would be miles from here...
Instead, Rotton watches the lipstick trace and retrace the lines of her mouth. Sawyer's warm weight across his lap confines him to the corner of the couch, and he wishes that he had a method to pull her down with them. His mouth keeps falling open, but no smooth words emerge.
They should be miles from here...
Shenhua leans into the mirror until her reflection kisses her back and then smiles with teeth that shine like daggers between those red, red lips.
By the stars, she is beautiful.
Sawyer murmurs in her sleep and collects her thin limbs into a smaller, sadder heap. Her sleeping face frowns into the folds of his dark slacks. Rotton touches her shoulder and lets his hand linger on her warm skin.
"She's exhausted," he observes.
Shenhua bounces a withering glance back at him through the mirror. "How smart of you to notice. That obvious, dummy. She work too hard. Little girl need someone make her stop once in while."
"It looks like she burned herself with the acid again," Rotton notes while his fingers worry the raw skin of Sawyer's ghost-pale wrist. The best cleaner in the city keeps a vat of particularly nasty stuff in her warehouse and feds it with fistfuls of teeth and fingertips. He has seen that sweet smile of hers while it lapped up the offerings and burbled for more.
"She so stupid. No sleep make her clumsy. Stupid clumsy," Shenhua scoffs. She works the braces of the throwing knives fashioned into garters up the smooth expanse of one thigh, then the other.
The rumble of military grade vehicles from the streets below their window accelerates her usual lethargic pace. Rotton understands the need for haste, but he misses the customary languid motion of her preparations. She is even more tantalizing when she takes her time.
But there isn't any time.
The pager tossed without regard onto the couch flashes strings of numbers that make no sense. The Triad alert system has been compromised, but Shenhua does not need a summons to see the call for her services. The Russians welcomed the night by blowing all the transformers in the area. The firefight started soon after. It is nothing like last night's decimation of the Italians with the stop and start of kicked down doors and sudden bursts of bullets. This is a siege. The roar of gunfire has the hungry rhythm of a forest fire. It makes their tiny array of candles flicker and sputter like slaves before an angry master. The uncertain light makes the patterns of her cheongsam waltz along the silken fabric.
Her hands work to bind back her hair before letting the mass of darkness float down to her back. Rotton looks away, down at the rumbled mess of uneven curls on Sawyer's sweet head. Her tiny hand fists into the flounces of her skirt. His own, much larger one tightens around her arm while Shenhua's heels on the hardwood announce that she is leaving.
She pauses at the door to crinkle her nose and stick out her tongue. "Bye bye, silly Wizard. Tell little girl good-bye."
Rotton nods because his voice has failed him one last time. The door swings shut. The candlelight dances on without her.
When he looks down, he sees Sawyer's blue eyes blink- once, twice. She doesn't depend on words, and in that moment, neither does he. She exhales as the weight of his kiss settles into the madness of her hair.
2200
Going back to her apartment was a mistake. He can't think of her without feeling sick. Revy and her custom Berettas. Two Hands with that broken smile and oceans of red on the floor.
Rock should have borrowed Dutch's shower or Benny's, but he could not bear to ask them for one more thing, not tonight. He leaves Benny to pack his bags and Dutch with a strong mug of coffee. He slips away to wash off the swamps of cold sweat under his arms and at his groin, so he will be ready for the final act. Rock's night is far from over.
The door is already opened when he goes around back. Of course, someone has been through the unlocked apartment since he left that morning. Even though wasn't much to take since he moved Revy's arsenal to the Lagoon office, the thief pilfered a fair bit of clothing and the beer from the fridge. Oddly, the furniture, including Revy's mattress with the sheets still tangled up from their last tryst, remains.
Rock wants to lie down and remember the heat of her, but Revy's scent make his guts churn.
How does she can do it? The pointing and the pulling? How can she do it and smile?
Rock stretches up to turn on the air conditioner. He hangs the garment bag over the bathroom door and puts the box containing his custom-made cuff links on the counter. He sheds the clothes that he wore all the long day onto the floor.
The water beats against the tile, and although he knows that the world is full of sound, the white noise from the shower and the air compressor fill his head with such astounding silence. Rock lets the water hit him as he tries and tries again to take up the full weight of who he has become.
2300
Tommy Gui has his ambitions, sure. He wants to move up the chain, wants Boss Chang's seat one day, wants a firecracker of a girl who could keep up with him in all the ways that matter. Hell, he wants to see tomorrow. That's the apex of ambition when you are facing down the best of Hotel Moscow.
The Russians move like an army in the streets before him because they are an army, and although he knows that- has always known that- the difference between knowing and seeing is enough to make him forget all of his ambitions until only the instinct that has carried him this far through his dark life is left.
Even though his mind has emptied to make room for all those split-second judgment calls of a combat scenario, Tommy is careful to stick with Boss Chang's plan. He moves in the prescribed pattern. He keeps out of the range of the snipers. He fires at heads because their body armor nearly negates any hit to the chest. He keeps count of his kills to compare with Two Hands later. It's just like that crazy bitch to get her kicks out of a blood contest. He agrees because something is just broken enough inside of his head to think that it sounds like a good time, too. She never mentioned a prize, but if he wins, he plans to claim her.
His mind dwells for a second too long on the pleasures of taking Two Hands.
Tommy Gui thinks of nothing in particular as he falls. He feels the overwhelming rush of the whole world and then all of that supreme stillness in the span of a moment.
The Ivan sniper had been tracking him for some time, waiting for the inevitable misstep in the wrong direction.
2400
Balalaika sees one of the Triad elite go down, and she looks backwards to share her smile with him. Her heart stops yet again when she can't find his face. Boris isn't there. She keeps forgetting. The remembering hurts every time, and yet she can't make herself accept that he is gone. She will keep searching through the smoke. It feels less like betrayal this way.
The front line breaks through another one of Chang's impromptu blockades. Her point force moves to the claim the ground while the 14K fades back to the next stop marker. Balalaika sets her jaw, shoulders her weapons, and follows.
She thought that she could finish Chang quickly by attacking right away. He stayed up all night taking care of the Colombians while Hotel Moscow chased down the Italians. She bet that he would take a day to recover, so she pushed her men to move against him without giving them a reprieve in between battles. She banked on his laziness and failed to admit that Chang posessed the power to get into her head. He foresaw her move and made preparations. He blocked the best routes into his territory with mountains of refuse. He used the advantages of the 14K's numbers to draw out Hotel Moscow along lengthy avenues. He didn't build a fort like a fool because he know that she would streamroll any defense he could erect. Instead of depending on a singular line of defense, the Triads use makeshift barriers. When she overwhelms one, they simply fall back to the next, and she loses men at every stop point. He knew that she would charge, and because he knows her, tonight will be darker and bloodier than she dares to dread. Very few of them will see tomorrow.
Balalaika feels her face crack into a thin smile. All these years of chasing an impossible glory war in the crime world, and Chang is the bastard who gives it to her. She doesn't know if the hard, twisting ache under her breastbone is growing love or boiling rage.
It may also be simple self-loathing. This is more her fault than Chang's brilliance. In Afghanistan, they used to fight for days on end. Those sun-baked days don't feel that long ago in her mind, so she made her plans as though they were just yesterday. In reality, she hasn't touched the desert in over a decade ago- another truth that she can't seem to make herself remember. She feels the weight of those years in her bones and sees the toil of time in limbs of her men.
She has counted on her strength, her men, and their experience, but time flies. Her body and mind feel so slow. Every time she looks up, there is another face missing in the ranks, and the 14K seems endless in number with their clown bag of cheap tricks. Smoke grenades and flash-bangs and dirty bombs rolled out in trash cans.
Looming in the distance, Chang's high-rise glows. It must be on an independent power grid from the rest of the Triad area. Although she tastes dread and blood mixed on her tongue, the light calls to Balalaika, and she does not know fear. She won't die until she faces him one last time.
0100
Bao almost didn't bother to open the bar. He couldn't imagine who would possibly come by for a drink on a night like this, but it is after midnight, nearly every seat is full, and the crowd is wonderfully quiet. He can hear the jukebox music piping Motown all the way across the room from his place behind the counter.
Madame Flora and her girls were among the first to arrive. Flora brought him a box of casings for his shotgun and a plateful of savory crepes. The girls looked so painfully young in their street-clothes that Bao opened his only bottles of champagne for them, and they paid him in kisses. When the other customers started arriving, the girls fell into hostess roles, all smiles and sweet manners. Within an hour, the Yellow Flag was filled to capacity. Bao can't remember a more docile or profitable night.
He looks up from the beer tap to see Flora holding court in the corner. When she pauses, there is laughter. Warm, honey rolls of it that seem to blot out the scream of rockets and explosions in the city.
Two of her girls have appointed themselves as cocktails waitresses, and they make cute displays of surprise when the typically stingy patrons offer up generous tips. The girls slip half of what they are making back to Bao with shy smiles. Madame Flora has trained them to give the house its rightful share, but Bao wouldn't care if they kept the lot of it. He can charge anything that he likes for the drinks, and the people would still pay.
He doesn't, though. After midnight, he started lowering prices and passing out free shots to his regular crowd. It's the end of the world, after all. It feels right to be a little kinder tonight.
0200
Eda stands at the open door of her wardrobe and tries to decide. It is technically Church business, so the habit is probably her best bet. Then again, it's a city job, possibly with guns a-blazing, and she moves so much better in her regular clothes.
Really, though? The night is so thick with humidity and heat that she feels like she could reach out her window and wring it like a damp cloth. She would prefer to wear nothing on a night like this. The mere thought of fabric makes her grumpy. Even the towel wrapped around her from the shower feels oppressively warm.
"We're almost ready-" Rico informs her from the hall, but cuts off when he turns into her room and finds her nearly naked. He lets out a cute little yip of surprise.
"Relax," Eda tells him as she turns to the bedroom door with a wicked smile. "I'm not really a Sister. I'm not breaking any vows."
Rico ducks his head to stare at the floor. His face glows from the heat of his blush. "I know, but you're making me want to break mine. You are very beautiful."
Even compliments cost in a place like Roanapur. Eda narrows her eyes and crosses her arms over the seam of the towel. "What do you want?"
Rico sags into the doorframe and offers up a watery grin. "To skip forward in time until it's tomorrow?"
Eda uncrosses her arms and breathes again. Rico is young still; she forgets that too often. Of course, he is scared. Rico hasn't been through the inferno before. Tonight marks his first trip to the edge of the void. What a crazy time to get your big-time combat cherry popped...
She turns to her wardrobe and lets the towel fall. She reaches for the under shift and the black robe and talks while she dresses.
"Listen, Rico. We're just doing back-up tonight. We'll be fine. Worse case scenario? Rock's big idea doesn't pan out, and we watch the city go down. But you and me, baby, we'll walk no matter what. That's our stake in this showdown. We're the survivors. But the best case scenario? We watch a new day coming while this whole ugly city rises up singing."
Rico sighs. "If you say so."
Eda drops the scapular over her head and ties it down with the woolen belt. She can hear the smile in her own voice. "Don't tell me that you're losing faith already, Daddy-o."
"And you haven't?" Rico asks far too seriously.
Eda shrugs and sinks onto the bed to lace up her boots. "I believe when it's too foolish to doubt. Never said that shit is easy, but we got a chance here. A good one. Rock is smart, and he's playing this extra-smart. I'm not going to look for dark clouds while the sun is shining, you know?"
When she reaches for the wimple, Rico's hands close around hers. Eda watches, bemused, while he adorns her palms with sincere, little kisses. She lets him because he is harmless, and the night is heavy with silence. Eda has learned to take scraps of comfort where she can.
"You should wear your hair down," he confesses, a little breathlessly, against her wrist.
Eda cocks an eyebrow at him. "Are you sure you want to deal with the temptation?"
"What can I say?"' Rico teases back. "I like beautiful things."
0300
Benny stands in line with the others and watches them to pass the time. He finds that he can look at any of them for as long as he likes because no one will meet his eye. It is so odd. On a usual day in Roanapur, they would be the ones sizing him up and coming to the same ridiculous conclusion. Tall, blonde, Caucasian: must be an Ivan. He had a hell of a time getting dates before Jane came along; the local girls just assumed he was one of Balalaika's warrior monks and wrote him off. He started wearing aloha shirts to differentiate himself from the stoic Ruskie crowd. Never did work, but it wasn't all bad. Street peddlers give him fair prices and correct change. The cops let him speed like a fiend in the Dodge. He really ought to get around to thanking Balalaika and her boys for small favors.
That is, if any of them survive.
Benny turns his attention to the show unfolding at the front counter. A man desperate for a ticket runs through the standard showing of ploys. Asking. Bribing. Threatening. Pleading.
The clerk shakes his head, apologizes, repeats. "There are simply no seats left on this flight, sir. There is nothing I can do."
It's not true.
The pleading man isn't offering enough, so the clerk lacks the proper motivation to bump one of the current passengers from the departure list. Benny knows about how much it took to secure his ticket on the last ride out of Roanapur. No regular Joe could afford that kind of fee for safe passage out of the burning city. The man arguing his case at the counter is nothing more than average, and Benny sees the wealth and power in the brutal creases of slacks and the polish on shoes in the crowd all around him. He feels a little like a joke with his silly shirt and scuffed sneakers, but the ticket is immutable in his hand. For the time being, he is one of them.
The minutes drag on. The surly lot of them lurks near the double, sliding glass doors that separates the tiny waiting area inside the airport from the rain-slick tarmac.
Inside his jacket pocket, Janet's number written on a scrap of paper promises warmth at the end of this very long ride. Benny remembers the scent of her hair and holds onto that happiness as the scream of a turbine engine rattles the building. The silver cigar of a jet plane touches down on the runway and coasts to a controllable speed despite the puddles. No faces darken the line of oval windows. A ghost flight. Who would be stupid enough to come here, now?
With no one to disembark, the few remaining staff at the airport starts the boarding right away.
His bags are heavy with discs and hard drives. Sweat drops congregate in unsavory places as he lugs his things across the pavement to the waiting plane. In comparison to the others, he travels light. The rest of the passengers drag suitcases the size of ponies after them. Benny can tell from their shuttered expressions that no one expects to come back.
He looks over his shoulder toward Roanapur as he climbs the stairs toward the aircraft's hatch, and something like lightning flashes across the sky followed by a distant rumble that isn't thunder. He half-expects to see a mushroom cloud blooming up through the light pollution of the smog-grey sky.
Benny doesn't believe in God these days. He remembers bits of the Torah and the prayers that his mother said, but he's more jew-ish than a true believer. Even so, he says something that might be a prayer because he isn't ready, not really. He does not want to say good-bye to Roanapur, even as she is leaving.
0400
The bourbon is a headache behind his eyes, and Dutch rests against the ledge to light his cigarette and wait.
In the streets below, another car blows, and his body jerks with a fear that he can't shake even after all these years. The scent of gasoline poisons the wind that also carries the clean smell of rain through leaves. He hates it all for being so damn familiar. All those gunfights and shitty jobs and lost decades, and here he is, right back in the hot zone. When he closes his aching eyes, he hears the memory of choppers and feels the burn of napalm fumes in his lungs.
He saw a woman in the gutter that morning. He went out to get a stronger brew of coffee and found her curled up next to the storm drain like a roadkill cat. Bullet in her neck and two in her chest. No clean shots, so it sure as hell wasn't planned. She was just there and unlucky. Her features were Thai, so clearly and unmistakably Thai, but Dutch can't shake the feeling that he has seen her before in a drained rice paddy in another country and a half-lifetime ago.
Maybe she is why the bourbon tasted better than usual, so good that he didn't stop even though he meant to.
Dutch exhales, leans back, and looks down.
Ivans move through the street, stealthy and deadly like the special forces they are and he was.
So they are planning to storm the castle, after all. Just like Rock planned. Everything is going just like Rock has said, but Dutch doesn't have faith in illusions like plans. He waits on the rooftop because there is nothing left to do and nowhere else to go. All bets have been placed, and he can't walk away until the final dice rolls. His reputation and most of his money are tied into Rock's insanity, and Dutch can offer no excuse to dull his regret's keen edge. Maybe he developed a terminal case of loneliness in his age. He can't explain why he has let his heart get so attached to a couple of crazy, slant-eyed kids and a cynical hacker.
The gunships kept him awake for too long last night with his memories. He hates being so nostalgic.
The rifle does a slow blink in the passing flare of an explosion.
The dead woman, he wonders to pass the time, who was she?
0500
Shin-Shin laughs himself to death. He was laughing when the bullets tore into him, and he keeps making burbling hyuk hyuk noises from the pavement while his legs kick around like the limbs of a brained dog.
Revy doesn't register loss. If she did, she would fear for her life because Shin-Shin was the last of her motley squad, and now it's just her against an angry unit of Balalaika's best.
It doesn't occur to Revy to feel pity. If she did, she would spare a bullet to hurry Shin-Shin's passing, but she lets him twitch while she fires into the blackness and fades down the alley.
A sniper's bullet pings off the metal fire escape over her head.
"Nice work, jackass!" she yells as she runs. She grins while her boots churn through the distance to the next of Chang's resistance points. That fucking sniper has been gunning for her all night, and the frustration of all those misses must be making him crap himself with shame. She can't wait to track him down and drill a third eye socket into his forehead.
She leaps over the barrier of reinforce cars and steel drums just in time to see the Russians flood the alley behind her.
Someone fires an RPG, and the explosion cooks her eyes for a heavy minute. Everything goes to perfect white and absolute silence.
When the color of life returns, she looks for Tommy Gui, so she can brag. Seven of the vodka boys, motherfucker. Beat that. But Tommy isn't there, and Revy knows that means he is dead. She doesn't feel one way or the other about it.
The Russians swarm forward, and the lot of the back-and-whites make a messy break for it.
Revy moves.
She doesn't think because thinking will get you killed.
The Triad nobodies turn around and run while the Russians bear down on them. Revy never liked the idea of dying with a bullet in her back, so she ducks into a car and kicks out the side window. Without risking too much, she picks off a couple guys. No kills, damn that body armor, but she slows them.
"Fuck!" she hisses as the sniper's rounds punch miniature skylights in the roof of the car. In sheer frustration, she fires back a few of her own.
She moves.
The Russians don't dare surround her. They know that she would use their bullets against each other. Five of them with assault rifles herd her toward the wall. She won't go that quietly. Revy turns and races to the brick. Her boots take what traction they can steal from the wall to carry her upward. Her legs push her up and away. Revy fires as she backflips, aiming for eyes and hands.
When she lands, three of them are down, but the other two have her. She aims both guns at the closest guy and fires until the clips are empty, which takes all of three shots total.
Even without her guns, she moves.
The last guy tries to get a bead on her, but those rifles aren't fun to aim in close range with a fast moving target. Revy ducks in to kick him in the groin, body shielding be damned, because she can't think of another thing to do. Before she can get her foot off the ground, the guy wises up and reaches for his side arm. She dodges, barely. A shot echoes. The guy goes down.
Revy grins to the rooftops. "Nice move, team-killer!" she hollers at the sniper. The bullets pound the ground around her like hail.
Revy laughs as she moves fast to avoid the metal rain.
She moves and moves with nothing at all in her mind.
0600
Chang waits for her. The Tower blazes, but his office is dark. Chang sits behind his desk, so she will know just how to find him. Because she will find him. She wants him, only him. Who cares that she is going to kill him or be killed by him? She wants him, and Chang has never felt so fucking honored.
He tells himself that he will save himself for her, that he will go against her cold— no warm-up— because he wants to return the favor of honor, but it's bullshit. When she comes, she will be worn through from two full nights of exhausting battle, and he will be fresh. There's an advantage in his waiting, even though he is too much of a coward to admit it. The bit about saving himself for her sounds so much more noble...
The door opens. It can't be her because no bullets announce the arrival.
Chang squints through the murky dark and sighs. "Oh, it's you. Didn't I tell you that I would shoot you in the face if you came back here?"
"You did," Rock answers simply. He shifts the briefcase from one hand to the other. "You know why I am here."
The guards had strict orders not to let anyone through, and there is no way that a simple Japanese business man could have blustered his way through a wall of Triad thugs.
The man standing before Chang wears a fine new suit and blinks back at him with the eyes of villain.
"So I'm betting that you have a compelling reason why I shouldn't put a bullet in each of your lungs," Chang says with a shake of his head.
"I have a proposition for you, Mr. Chang," Rock replies.
"What makes you think I'm that kind of guy?" Chang jokes.
Rock smiles with all the warmth of a glacier. "You would be wise to listen."
"What makes you think that I'm wise?" Chang asks, but the joke is flat.
Rock's smile stays fixed, and when he moves toward Chang's desk, he moves with the fearless gait of a victor.