Chapter 1

A quick look about the room reveals nothing.

Amber eyes trace the edges of the walls, lost in shadows undulating with the gentle flicker of a candle. Green striped wallpaper peels away at the corners of the cramped area, revealing the cheap wooden frame underneath. The ceiling hangs no more than a hand's length over her head, and the entire space of the room is occupied by a nightstand and a bed.

"No matter how small it is, we used it well." Her quiet words are spoken only for herself, as she tucks the blankets tighter around the immobile form on the bed.

As much as she found the room distastefully inelegant and cramped, it was one of the most expensive available. The lower decks had four to eight people on bunk beds in rooms of this size.

She turns to face the mirror, an unusually complicated task in heels and her tight dress, but she performs with the nonchalance of a professional dancer, fluidly. Her hands move to adjust her painstakingly managed hair, woven into an intricate pattern over the course of more hours than she cared to count.

The yellow glint of her eyes, caught her attention and for a moment she stared, before they slowly shifted to a greener hue. A ladylike exhalation was her only outward sign of anger.

"I have not yet fully regenerated, Thomas." She shut her eyes against her embarrassment. "It will be some time yet, I imagine."

Snapping open again, her gaze shot to him. With a hungry smile, she proceeded over to stand in the nook between nightstand and bed, and leaned over him. Gently, she took his head in her hands and twisted it to face her. Immediately visible were the puncture wounds on the underside of his neck, where she had fed slowly, conserving him to last the full journey. Perched haphazardly atop the crook of his nose were a pair of darkened glasses. Her deft hands removed the glasses to expose the look of mortal terror which his eyes held.

"Once again, you prove yourself my savior." She twisted him back so that he faced away from the door again. With a careless ease, she slipped the circular Victorian shades on.

"So long, Thomas." She opened the door and slipped out.

Hong Kong at night was subdued and peaceful. Cobblestone streets interwoven between looming warehouses with dark windows and red bricks greeted the eyes, gradually turning to tenement buildings plastered with incomprehensible script that the Chinese considered to be writing.

Still, she thought to herself, they were better than the hieroglyphs that had accompanied her for altogether too long. A cold shiver worked its way up her back. She descended the ramp from the ship slowly, twirling her parasol and keeping her eyes hidden behind her Victorian shades to keep a ladylike air.

Far beyond the tenements, there was a distinct area further up the lush topography where the scrawl was nowhere to be seen, and the buildings were of European style, punctuated by an English manor. If he was still here, that would be where.

"Help you, mum?" A cockney greeted her warmly.

As she turned, her words caught momentarily in her mouth as she was not greeted by a charming but somewhat impoverished carriage driver, but a spritely Chinese boy with what looked like a chair on wheels.

"Something the mattah, mum?"

"Er, not at all." She blinked with some effort. "What is..."

"Ah, s'a rickshaw, tis. I'll show yah."

With a surprisingly swift movement, he had swept her onto the seat and sped off in the direction of the English quarter. The contraption skittered up the street, wooden wheels giving her a sense for even the slightest bump or protrusion.

"Whatcha tastes, mum?"

"What?" To hell with ladylike, she was ten feet away from killing him.

"Whatcha looking for?"

"Oh," she began to see his usefulness. "I'm looking for a certain someone."

"Aright, whatah the gov's tastes?"

"Ah, probably somewhere discrete..."

She hardly had time to grab the sides of the seat as she was whipped around a corner and up an alleyway hardly wide enough to accommodate a single person, let alone two people and a rolling chair. Surely enough, a door whipped open up ahead and a form emerged. If she'd had time to think, she would have seen that it was not one form, but two – a couple intertwined with each other. Of course, if she'd had time to think she probably would have screamed in alarm.

The 'rickshaw' careened past the couple, and into the doorway through which they had only momentarily burst. Suddenly, the Chinese boy hopped up into her lap, and the ground became only somewhat bumpier than before. It took her a moment to understand that they were descending a dimly lit stairway. It took her only a moment further to realize she already was screaming. As they hit the landing, he jumped from her lap and guided them down through a maze of darkness, winding through such a labyrinth that she felt for certain that they would at any moment run into the minotaur of Greek mythos.

After what felt like an eternity, they came upon a naked light bulb swaying ever so slightly in the air above her, in front of a reinforced iron door which had only recently begun to show signs of rusting. A thin strip of the door slid away to reveal a piercing gaze which examined them as though they weren't weird enough a sight to let in, the piece slid back but the boy reached up quick and prevented it.

The eyes returned and looked at him with no small amount of annoyance. A string of gibberish syllables which sounded decidedly exacerbated sprang from behind the door, and without letting it end, the boy interjected with an even faster stream of speech. An increasingly speedy argument broke out between them, like a race to see who could say the same series of sentences the speediest.

Much to her surprise, the boy seemed to win, and the eyes regarded him for a tense second, before gesticulating in her direction and snapping shut.

"Bloke says we can get in, but we need to leave the rickshaw."

"Oh, is that a problem?"

"Nah, it's not mine."