A/N: Please heed the rating from here on in, if you've been thinking I
haven't earned it yet....
***
XVI. Retrieval
Late morning sun streamed in through the plate glass windows of Mao's office, and Vicious had to squint to make out his mentor's features. They were alone in the room; Mao had sent the guards outside and ordered them to prevent anyone from entering until they were recalled. He made no attempt at the usual pleasantries before he sat down in his chair.
He cleared his throat and began. "Ichido has reviewed the records related to Spike's account. The money he received was funneled from a number of other Dragon holdings; it does not have its origin in any one place. Moreover, the transactions appear to have been triggered by a computer program, and as such, we have not yet been able to identify who initiated them." Vicious opened his mouth to speak, but Mao silenced him with a wave of his hand. "He must not remain in Tharsis City. The most disturbing discovery I've made today is that the financial evidence suggests no outside involvement at all – the White Tiger clan did not provide the money for the payment."
Vicious closed his eyes, searching his memory for what Spike had said about the messenger in the alley. "Spike did not see the face of the man who contacted him," he said to himself. "But it would be unlike him not to recognize the voice or posture of someone he had met before."
"I need to speak with him," Mao replied. "Not over a communication channel, and not here. He needs to be moved from Julia's immediately. The records of your purchase of that apartment are available to anyone with financial access. Even if his whereabouts are mostly unknown – and I regret that we have not kept a tighter lid on that information – it will only be a matter of time before the location becomes a target."
Vicious took out his comm.; Mao looked concerned, but waited. Only seconds passed before Julia answered, her face pale and weary. "Vicious?"
"Julia, you need to leave your apartment immediately. Can your patient be moved?"
She frowned, irritation and worry clear in her eyes. "He's been up, but it wasn't good for him. He's been sleeping for five hours, ever since."
"I want you to come to the tower at once." Vicious knew he was asking too much, but also knew that Mao would not allow him to provide any more detail. "We will come to collect the ward."
Mao nodded in silent agreement, listening closely to Julia's reply. "I can't leave without saying anything, or whoever shows up here might end up dead," she said, her voice tight. "But I'll try to leave as soon as I can."
"Listen to me carefully. Do it now. Wake him if you feel it's best, but waste no time. This call was a risk I did not want to take." Vicious looked across the desk. "Do you have anything to add?"
"He will be in good hands, Julia." Mao motioned for Vicious to keep the comm. aimed at himself.
"He is in good hands," she shot back. "I'll see you soon." She disconnected, and Vicious let out a sigh.
"Who do we send to get him?" he muttered.
"We go ourselves," Mao replied, standing. "Take your zipcraft. I'll drive. Someone will need to meet Julia here when she arrives."
"Marcus was in the library when you summoned me. I will instruct him to wait in the lobby for her." Vicious rose as well, giving Mao a long look before he turned to go.
"No one else," Mao cautioned, and Vicious raised a hand in acknowledgement as he opened the door and nodded to the guards.
***
Julia looked in at the sleeping man in her bed, but couldn't bring herself to wake him yet. Instead, she roamed the apartment, gathering his things that she'd salvaged from his coat pockets and putting them all in a duffel bag. With that done, she made another plate of cheese and vegetables, added a hard-boiled egg, and filled a glass of water, carrying the food in to the bedside table.
She sat down on the bed and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Spike? You need to wake up."
He sighed and turned his head, but did not reply.
"I have to leave. Vicious is coming to get you."
His eyes snapped open and she could see he was trying to re-orient himself. "What do you mean, he's coming to get me?"
"We have to leave. He just called and told me to get out right away. He said they'd come to pick you up and told me not to wait." She fought to keep the fear from her voice.
He took her hand. "I'll go with you. Please."
"I'm sorry," she whispered, trying to come up with a reason to deny him, "I don't know anything, they wouldn't say anything over the comm. Mao and Vicious were the only ones on the line. They must have their reasons." She squeezed his fingers. "I brought you more food and water. You should eat before they get here, or you won't be able to go with them."
He nodded, but would not let go of her hand as he summoned all of his strength and sat up. It brought him inches from her face, and he stared into her eyes; she found it disorienting to hold his gaze for too long. The mismatched colors, and the reason for them, brought back a flood of sympathy and concern, and she reached to put her arm around his waist.
He stiffened and she heard him suck in a breath at the pain. "Julia," he whispered, not letting her look away. "They're going to kill me."
"No." She spat the word out before she'd even thought it through. "You're living in the past. I trust Mao to bring you in safe."
"Why else would they call you away first?" His expression was unreadable. "He sent Vicious to kill me once before. What if they've decided I betrayed the Syndicate for the money?"
"You didn't, did you?" She searched his face.
"Of course not. But I know how it looks." He finally dropped his gaze, examining her fingers in his own. "And I know how this sounds."
"We have to trust them. That's what my whole life here in Tharsis City has been – learning to trust you, and Vicious, and Mao, and the rest of the family to look after me when I was too lost to look after myself."
He exhaled slowly, looking at her again as he released her hand to brush the hair back from her eyes. She sat frozen while he moved, and before she realized it was happening, he had leaned in to her, his breath warm on her face, mouth barely touching hers. He waited there for her response, and to her own surprise, she returned the kiss, gentle because of his parched skin but thrilled all the same. He breathed in, tasting her, hesitant with his tongue but still asking; she answered by parting her lips and cradling the back of his head in her hand. Fear and guilt clamored to break through, but she pushed them back, too in awe of the rush of warmth and tenderness she felt to let it be spoiled.
He pulled back after too brief a moment and would not look up. "I'm so sorry," he said. "I just – when I saw you standing in the doorway after I was shot, the last thing I remember thinking was that I had never kissed you, and I was going to die. It was wrong of me to do it now."
A sob built up in her chest, and to stop it, she kissed him again, though he fought his body's response. She sat back and took his chin in her hand, forcing him to look at her. "You owe me no apology."
He nodded. "Thank you. Now go. You don't want to be here for this."
She hesitated. "Go on," he urged. "But bring me my gun."
Her eyes widened, but before she could say what she was thinking, he shook his head. "Not like that. I'm going to go down shooting, though."
"In the bag," she said, lifting the duffel onto the mattress beside him. "With your comm. and your wallet." She bit her lip, but no words seemed right for parting.
"Remember me," he replied, and took the Jericho out, checking that it was still loaded. "Julia, go."
She stood and obeyed, though every fiber of her being screamed that it was a mistake.
***
After he heard the front door close and lock, Spike flexed his muscles, trying out his left arm, pleased to find he could at least move it, although it did not obey quickly or reliably. He drew his knees up, letting out a sharp gasp at the way the graze on his hip stung, but it was just a cut – nothing he could not ignore. He forced himself to sit up with his feet on the floor and tested the left arm further, using it to drink the water she'd brought and jam a few morsels of food into his mouth before nausea welled up. He breathed slowly until it passed and choked down the hard-boiled egg in one gulp, coughing and blinking the bright spots out of his vision at the searing pain in his ribs.
He checked the Jericho again, flicking off the safety and racking the slide with his weak left hand. "What do I owe you now, Vicious?" he asked the room. Minutes passed with no sound save the noise of the street below, and he realized he was using up strength he might need, so he settled back under the blankets, the gun flush with his thigh beneath them, alert to every current of air and shifting tone around him.
He'd heard nothing in the hall outside, but the thud and the sound of wood and metal wrenching came only a few minutes later. The front door swung around and banged against the coat rack. Footsteps followed, but no speech – he heard two men pacing the apartment, one of them checking the bathroom. He squeezed the trigger until he felt the familiar pressure of a hair's breadth from firing and opened his eyes when the footsteps approached the bedroom door.
Spike did not recognize the man who stood there; he was blond, Nordic, his hair cropped, wearing a sweater and jeans. He held a pistol, but clearly had not expected his target to be awake, because his eyes widened when he saw Spike looking directly at him. He registered no more than a shift of the blankets before a bullet tore through the top of his skull, and with his right eye Spike noted the swirling bits of thread and down feathers blown out by the gun's report.
The second figure appeared in the doorway, a much larger-caliber weapon trained on him in the bed, but Spike was ready – though his aim was slightly off, and this time he saw his attacker's neck explode with the impact at the same time the mattress beside him burst in a shower of feathers and foam. He checked to make certain he had not been hit and then rolled into a crouch behind the bed frame, listening for more footsteps, but none came.
After a few minutes had passed, he reached up and dragged the duffel down to the floor with him, digging out his comm. Vicious answered at the console of his ship. "What are you doing contacting me?" he barked.
"Your retrieval party is dead," he snapped back.
"What in hell are you talking about?" Vicious looked between the comm. and his flight path, his expression furious.
"Your little party crashers. Julia must not have told you I'd been awake." But the seeds of doubt formed in his mind even as he spoke.
"I'm on my way to pick you up myself. If you can move, be ready. We will discuss this face to face." Vicious disconnected.
Spike leaned against the ruined mattress, panting, sick from the adrenaline surge and confused. Less than a minute went by before the whine of a zipcraft filtered in through the window, and the floor shuddered as it landed on the roof. He clenched his teeth, using the pain in his jaw to help stay awake, and checked his clip – nine rounds left.
Through the open front door, he could hear the fire escape alarm buzz and then stop. Vicious' familiar footfall crossed the living room; Spike knew he would be wary and alert, and that the bodies would give him pause. When he heard a floorboard creak outside the bathroom, he peered over the top of the bed and rested the gun on the edge of it, trained on the doorway.
"Spike." Vicious' voice was flat, barely loud enough to hear. "It's me. I'm coming in."
Spike cocked the Jericho in response.
"Mao is on his way up," Vicious went on, still in the hallway. "We've come to get you out of here. I apologize for being late."
"Apology not accepted," Spike snarled, but he shifted so he could see a little more clearly over his makeshift blind. "If you're coming in, do it without your weapon."
He heard the ring-and-thud of the katana being set carefully on the hardwood floor, and then two hands appeared in the doorway. Vicious sidestepped across the opening, ready to duck, and met Spike's eyes. He ignored the gun. "Why would you think we were coming to kill you?"
"I've been dreaming about you," Spike replied. "Trying to figure out why you left me for dead. Then I started thinking maybe you wanted me dead."
Vicious kept his hands high as he crossed to sit in the chair Julia brought in. He regarded Spike across the bed, his face a mixture of confusion and concern. "You really have lost a lot of blood," he said conversationally.
"Damn it, don't patronize me. Why did you call for Julia and leave me here? Did you really think those two punks would be able to get rid of me?"
"I have no idea who these two are, but they don't look like the types I'd send to deal with you. And I didn't send them. Mao got information –"
They both froze at the sound of footsteps in the living room, but neither moved until Mao entered the room. Spike targeted him with a twist of the wrist, but hesitated, and the older man immediately raised his hands in the air as well.
"Spike, we wanted to get here before this happened," Mao said. "We're here to move you. No one but Vicious and myself will know your location. I needed to speak with you before you went, though."
Spike relaxed his grip on his gun and lowered his aim, though he did not let go of it or change position behind the bed. "I have a better idea. Take me to the Swordfish, and I'll go where no one but me knows my location."
"You know the ship can be tracked," Vicious replied.
"I'm not staying with it," Spike snapped. "But I can outrun anyone stupid enough to follow me."
Mao took a deep breath and came around the end of the bed to Spike's side. He knelt on the floor and extended a hand. "Put the gun down, please. We came to help. You need to know what I've learned."
Spike let the gun drop to his lap, but made no move to give it up. "I'm getting really sick of people trying to kill me and not getting the job done," he said in a low growl. "I'm too tired for this shit. So if that's your plan, just do it." He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the bed.
Mao crossed to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Keep your weapon, if it makes you feel safer. But let me help you get up to the roof, and Vicious will take you to our next meeting point. I'll join you there."
For a long moment, no one moved or breathed; finally, Spike let out a weak sigh and nodded, and Mao took his hand to draw him up onto his feet.
They made their way out of the apartment; as Spike stepped over the two bodies in the doorway and took in the blood spatter and gore, he said to Mao, "Have somebody clean this up, or Julia will kill me herself if I live out the week."
Mao chuckled. "Julia won't be back for a while."
Spike stopped short. "What does that mean?"
"Keep moving," Mao replied. "We wanted you both out because the person – or perhaps people – who targeted you have access to the Red Dragon financial records. Vicious' ownership of the apartment would have been easy to trace. We have not been able to verify that any contact or money came from the White Tiger syndicate."
They ascended the fire escape in silence. Spike struggled to stay conscious; the bright noon sunlight made his head pound, and the climb into Vicious' ship abused every injury on his body.
When they were in the air, Spike let himself drift, thinking that piloting his own ship might be more of an effort than he was ready to make. Vicious did not let him fade out, though. "I had to get Lin and Marcus out," he said over his shoulder. "I should have known you would not fall so easily."
Spike frowned. "By my count, you owe me now," he replied.
Vicious nodded, but said no more.
***
XVI. Retrieval
Late morning sun streamed in through the plate glass windows of Mao's office, and Vicious had to squint to make out his mentor's features. They were alone in the room; Mao had sent the guards outside and ordered them to prevent anyone from entering until they were recalled. He made no attempt at the usual pleasantries before he sat down in his chair.
He cleared his throat and began. "Ichido has reviewed the records related to Spike's account. The money he received was funneled from a number of other Dragon holdings; it does not have its origin in any one place. Moreover, the transactions appear to have been triggered by a computer program, and as such, we have not yet been able to identify who initiated them." Vicious opened his mouth to speak, but Mao silenced him with a wave of his hand. "He must not remain in Tharsis City. The most disturbing discovery I've made today is that the financial evidence suggests no outside involvement at all – the White Tiger clan did not provide the money for the payment."
Vicious closed his eyes, searching his memory for what Spike had said about the messenger in the alley. "Spike did not see the face of the man who contacted him," he said to himself. "But it would be unlike him not to recognize the voice or posture of someone he had met before."
"I need to speak with him," Mao replied. "Not over a communication channel, and not here. He needs to be moved from Julia's immediately. The records of your purchase of that apartment are available to anyone with financial access. Even if his whereabouts are mostly unknown – and I regret that we have not kept a tighter lid on that information – it will only be a matter of time before the location becomes a target."
Vicious took out his comm.; Mao looked concerned, but waited. Only seconds passed before Julia answered, her face pale and weary. "Vicious?"
"Julia, you need to leave your apartment immediately. Can your patient be moved?"
She frowned, irritation and worry clear in her eyes. "He's been up, but it wasn't good for him. He's been sleeping for five hours, ever since."
"I want you to come to the tower at once." Vicious knew he was asking too much, but also knew that Mao would not allow him to provide any more detail. "We will come to collect the ward."
Mao nodded in silent agreement, listening closely to Julia's reply. "I can't leave without saying anything, or whoever shows up here might end up dead," she said, her voice tight. "But I'll try to leave as soon as I can."
"Listen to me carefully. Do it now. Wake him if you feel it's best, but waste no time. This call was a risk I did not want to take." Vicious looked across the desk. "Do you have anything to add?"
"He will be in good hands, Julia." Mao motioned for Vicious to keep the comm. aimed at himself.
"He is in good hands," she shot back. "I'll see you soon." She disconnected, and Vicious let out a sigh.
"Who do we send to get him?" he muttered.
"We go ourselves," Mao replied, standing. "Take your zipcraft. I'll drive. Someone will need to meet Julia here when she arrives."
"Marcus was in the library when you summoned me. I will instruct him to wait in the lobby for her." Vicious rose as well, giving Mao a long look before he turned to go.
"No one else," Mao cautioned, and Vicious raised a hand in acknowledgement as he opened the door and nodded to the guards.
***
Julia looked in at the sleeping man in her bed, but couldn't bring herself to wake him yet. Instead, she roamed the apartment, gathering his things that she'd salvaged from his coat pockets and putting them all in a duffel bag. With that done, she made another plate of cheese and vegetables, added a hard-boiled egg, and filled a glass of water, carrying the food in to the bedside table.
She sat down on the bed and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Spike? You need to wake up."
He sighed and turned his head, but did not reply.
"I have to leave. Vicious is coming to get you."
His eyes snapped open and she could see he was trying to re-orient himself. "What do you mean, he's coming to get me?"
"We have to leave. He just called and told me to get out right away. He said they'd come to pick you up and told me not to wait." She fought to keep the fear from her voice.
He took her hand. "I'll go with you. Please."
"I'm sorry," she whispered, trying to come up with a reason to deny him, "I don't know anything, they wouldn't say anything over the comm. Mao and Vicious were the only ones on the line. They must have their reasons." She squeezed his fingers. "I brought you more food and water. You should eat before they get here, or you won't be able to go with them."
He nodded, but would not let go of her hand as he summoned all of his strength and sat up. It brought him inches from her face, and he stared into her eyes; she found it disorienting to hold his gaze for too long. The mismatched colors, and the reason for them, brought back a flood of sympathy and concern, and she reached to put her arm around his waist.
He stiffened and she heard him suck in a breath at the pain. "Julia," he whispered, not letting her look away. "They're going to kill me."
"No." She spat the word out before she'd even thought it through. "You're living in the past. I trust Mao to bring you in safe."
"Why else would they call you away first?" His expression was unreadable. "He sent Vicious to kill me once before. What if they've decided I betrayed the Syndicate for the money?"
"You didn't, did you?" She searched his face.
"Of course not. But I know how it looks." He finally dropped his gaze, examining her fingers in his own. "And I know how this sounds."
"We have to trust them. That's what my whole life here in Tharsis City has been – learning to trust you, and Vicious, and Mao, and the rest of the family to look after me when I was too lost to look after myself."
He exhaled slowly, looking at her again as he released her hand to brush the hair back from her eyes. She sat frozen while he moved, and before she realized it was happening, he had leaned in to her, his breath warm on her face, mouth barely touching hers. He waited there for her response, and to her own surprise, she returned the kiss, gentle because of his parched skin but thrilled all the same. He breathed in, tasting her, hesitant with his tongue but still asking; she answered by parting her lips and cradling the back of his head in her hand. Fear and guilt clamored to break through, but she pushed them back, too in awe of the rush of warmth and tenderness she felt to let it be spoiled.
He pulled back after too brief a moment and would not look up. "I'm so sorry," he said. "I just – when I saw you standing in the doorway after I was shot, the last thing I remember thinking was that I had never kissed you, and I was going to die. It was wrong of me to do it now."
A sob built up in her chest, and to stop it, she kissed him again, though he fought his body's response. She sat back and took his chin in her hand, forcing him to look at her. "You owe me no apology."
He nodded. "Thank you. Now go. You don't want to be here for this."
She hesitated. "Go on," he urged. "But bring me my gun."
Her eyes widened, but before she could say what she was thinking, he shook his head. "Not like that. I'm going to go down shooting, though."
"In the bag," she said, lifting the duffel onto the mattress beside him. "With your comm. and your wallet." She bit her lip, but no words seemed right for parting.
"Remember me," he replied, and took the Jericho out, checking that it was still loaded. "Julia, go."
She stood and obeyed, though every fiber of her being screamed that it was a mistake.
***
After he heard the front door close and lock, Spike flexed his muscles, trying out his left arm, pleased to find he could at least move it, although it did not obey quickly or reliably. He drew his knees up, letting out a sharp gasp at the way the graze on his hip stung, but it was just a cut – nothing he could not ignore. He forced himself to sit up with his feet on the floor and tested the left arm further, using it to drink the water she'd brought and jam a few morsels of food into his mouth before nausea welled up. He breathed slowly until it passed and choked down the hard-boiled egg in one gulp, coughing and blinking the bright spots out of his vision at the searing pain in his ribs.
He checked the Jericho again, flicking off the safety and racking the slide with his weak left hand. "What do I owe you now, Vicious?" he asked the room. Minutes passed with no sound save the noise of the street below, and he realized he was using up strength he might need, so he settled back under the blankets, the gun flush with his thigh beneath them, alert to every current of air and shifting tone around him.
He'd heard nothing in the hall outside, but the thud and the sound of wood and metal wrenching came only a few minutes later. The front door swung around and banged against the coat rack. Footsteps followed, but no speech – he heard two men pacing the apartment, one of them checking the bathroom. He squeezed the trigger until he felt the familiar pressure of a hair's breadth from firing and opened his eyes when the footsteps approached the bedroom door.
Spike did not recognize the man who stood there; he was blond, Nordic, his hair cropped, wearing a sweater and jeans. He held a pistol, but clearly had not expected his target to be awake, because his eyes widened when he saw Spike looking directly at him. He registered no more than a shift of the blankets before a bullet tore through the top of his skull, and with his right eye Spike noted the swirling bits of thread and down feathers blown out by the gun's report.
The second figure appeared in the doorway, a much larger-caliber weapon trained on him in the bed, but Spike was ready – though his aim was slightly off, and this time he saw his attacker's neck explode with the impact at the same time the mattress beside him burst in a shower of feathers and foam. He checked to make certain he had not been hit and then rolled into a crouch behind the bed frame, listening for more footsteps, but none came.
After a few minutes had passed, he reached up and dragged the duffel down to the floor with him, digging out his comm. Vicious answered at the console of his ship. "What are you doing contacting me?" he barked.
"Your retrieval party is dead," he snapped back.
"What in hell are you talking about?" Vicious looked between the comm. and his flight path, his expression furious.
"Your little party crashers. Julia must not have told you I'd been awake." But the seeds of doubt formed in his mind even as he spoke.
"I'm on my way to pick you up myself. If you can move, be ready. We will discuss this face to face." Vicious disconnected.
Spike leaned against the ruined mattress, panting, sick from the adrenaline surge and confused. Less than a minute went by before the whine of a zipcraft filtered in through the window, and the floor shuddered as it landed on the roof. He clenched his teeth, using the pain in his jaw to help stay awake, and checked his clip – nine rounds left.
Through the open front door, he could hear the fire escape alarm buzz and then stop. Vicious' familiar footfall crossed the living room; Spike knew he would be wary and alert, and that the bodies would give him pause. When he heard a floorboard creak outside the bathroom, he peered over the top of the bed and rested the gun on the edge of it, trained on the doorway.
"Spike." Vicious' voice was flat, barely loud enough to hear. "It's me. I'm coming in."
Spike cocked the Jericho in response.
"Mao is on his way up," Vicious went on, still in the hallway. "We've come to get you out of here. I apologize for being late."
"Apology not accepted," Spike snarled, but he shifted so he could see a little more clearly over his makeshift blind. "If you're coming in, do it without your weapon."
He heard the ring-and-thud of the katana being set carefully on the hardwood floor, and then two hands appeared in the doorway. Vicious sidestepped across the opening, ready to duck, and met Spike's eyes. He ignored the gun. "Why would you think we were coming to kill you?"
"I've been dreaming about you," Spike replied. "Trying to figure out why you left me for dead. Then I started thinking maybe you wanted me dead."
Vicious kept his hands high as he crossed to sit in the chair Julia brought in. He regarded Spike across the bed, his face a mixture of confusion and concern. "You really have lost a lot of blood," he said conversationally.
"Damn it, don't patronize me. Why did you call for Julia and leave me here? Did you really think those two punks would be able to get rid of me?"
"I have no idea who these two are, but they don't look like the types I'd send to deal with you. And I didn't send them. Mao got information –"
They both froze at the sound of footsteps in the living room, but neither moved until Mao entered the room. Spike targeted him with a twist of the wrist, but hesitated, and the older man immediately raised his hands in the air as well.
"Spike, we wanted to get here before this happened," Mao said. "We're here to move you. No one but Vicious and myself will know your location. I needed to speak with you before you went, though."
Spike relaxed his grip on his gun and lowered his aim, though he did not let go of it or change position behind the bed. "I have a better idea. Take me to the Swordfish, and I'll go where no one but me knows my location."
"You know the ship can be tracked," Vicious replied.
"I'm not staying with it," Spike snapped. "But I can outrun anyone stupid enough to follow me."
Mao took a deep breath and came around the end of the bed to Spike's side. He knelt on the floor and extended a hand. "Put the gun down, please. We came to help. You need to know what I've learned."
Spike let the gun drop to his lap, but made no move to give it up. "I'm getting really sick of people trying to kill me and not getting the job done," he said in a low growl. "I'm too tired for this shit. So if that's your plan, just do it." He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the bed.
Mao crossed to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Keep your weapon, if it makes you feel safer. But let me help you get up to the roof, and Vicious will take you to our next meeting point. I'll join you there."
For a long moment, no one moved or breathed; finally, Spike let out a weak sigh and nodded, and Mao took his hand to draw him up onto his feet.
They made their way out of the apartment; as Spike stepped over the two bodies in the doorway and took in the blood spatter and gore, he said to Mao, "Have somebody clean this up, or Julia will kill me herself if I live out the week."
Mao chuckled. "Julia won't be back for a while."
Spike stopped short. "What does that mean?"
"Keep moving," Mao replied. "We wanted you both out because the person – or perhaps people – who targeted you have access to the Red Dragon financial records. Vicious' ownership of the apartment would have been easy to trace. We have not been able to verify that any contact or money came from the White Tiger syndicate."
They ascended the fire escape in silence. Spike struggled to stay conscious; the bright noon sunlight made his head pound, and the climb into Vicious' ship abused every injury on his body.
When they were in the air, Spike let himself drift, thinking that piloting his own ship might be more of an effort than he was ready to make. Vicious did not let him fade out, though. "I had to get Lin and Marcus out," he said over his shoulder. "I should have known you would not fall so easily."
Spike frowned. "By my count, you owe me now," he replied.
Vicious nodded, but said no more.