CHINA, HONG KONG - MEI'S APARTMENT: 25 JUN 2015
The group remained armed. They frequently had to brandish their swords to dissuade strangers from approaching them. The panicked flight through the city had drained them. The horrors they noticed during their trek had toughened them. They finally approached Mei's apartment and knocked. Mai quickly let them inside.
"Thank God, you are all okay," Mei replied hastily as she ushered them into her apartment. "The streets have turned chaotic in the last hour."
"I failed," Sah-him told her his anguish and guilt written on his face.
"We all failed," Hisan corrected his student. "It was not your duty alone, Sah-him."
"The virus was released," Mei stated, reading Sah-him's guilt.
"It was," Tatsu replied. "Maseo and I spooked the food truck driver. Sah-him was able to stop him. But the vial broke on the ground."
Mei felt relieved. "You were that close?" she asked Sah-him. "The vaccine must work if you were that close to the release point. The virus would be most concentrated at that point. None of you appear to be showing any symptoms," Mei said with relief in her voice.
Hisan called their attention after he got of the phone with the other teachers. "I have reported. Our people are going to remove the source of evil during this chaos. Stealth is no longer a consideration. Dafdae, Sah-him, come," he ordered.
"We need to leave Hong Kong," Maseo replied. "It is no longer safe."
"We can drop you off on our way to the compound. It is near the edge of the mountains," Hisan replied.
"I want to help," Mei replied. "I can shoot a bow. My father taught me."
"You are welcome as well," Hisan replied. "You may seek justice for the attack on your city."
Mei ran to the closet and gathered her bow and quiver. She joined the group as they trooped back to the van and piled in. Tatsu kept Akio in her arms in the crowded van. Sah-him and Dafdae crouched in the back with the remaining weapons. They had already strapped their quivers and swords on their backs. They armed up with as many darts and knives as they could carry in their civilian clothes. Their League gear was still back at the safe house. But they refused to go back now. Hisan said that stealth was no longer a consideration. Those terrorists will die today.
=I'm not feeling so well, Okasan,= Akio said in a subdued Japanese to Tatsu.
=It's okay, Akio,= Tatsu replied in Japanese and immediately raised her hand to her son's forehead. He burned with a fever. Her eyes widened. =No,= she whispered. A drop of blood started to fall from Akio's nose. =No, no, no,= she chanted in denial.
Maseo looked over to see Tatsu start to panic as Akio was showing obvious signs of having become ill. His started. "How can this be?" Maseo demanded. =Have we not done everything the gods desired? Why must they take our son?= he yelled his rhetorical questions in Japanese.
Mei looked over at Tatsu and Akio. She saw the blood. "Oh, Akio," she whispered. "I was hoping you had enough time. I was so glad the vaccine worked for the others. I had hope."
"What do you mean?" Maseo demanded.
"Children do not have an efficient immune system," Mei said sadly. "They need to be vaccinated for longer than an adult... to allow their immune system to work... to gain immunity to the virus. I was hoping… that Akio had enough time. I am sorry."
They continued to drive in silence through the chaotic streets. "Stop!" Tatsu shouted as she suddenly spied a pharmacy as they passed it.
Hisan slammed on the brakes at Tatsu's request.
Tatsu opened the door and carried Akio inside a pharmacy. Maseo followed her, but he could not watch his son die. "If Shrieve developed a vaccine, he must have developed a cure. I will go get it from him. I will save our son," he told Tatsu. He stood up and climbed back into the van. "Go! We will interrogate Shrieve. He made a vaccine. He must have made a cure," Maseo told them.
Hisan started the van again. "We will see," he replied. His experience with evil had shown him that curing a disease was not a priority for them. They desired pain, greed, and death to those who opposed them. They seldom wanted a cure. They felt immune to their own evil.
"I hope he did, Maseo," Mei told him sadly. "But… don't get your hopes up. Vaccines are easy to develop. Cures are not."
"I will save my son," Maseo told her firmly.
The van slowly made it to the compound. Hisan checked his phone. "The others are here. We can attack at any time. I have told them to leave the source for us," he told the group. Hisan finished arming himself with his swords and his quiver before taking his bow.
Hisan nodded to them and they spread out and began to target and kill every person guarding the compound. Maseo noted other figures in the black outfits. The same black outfits he had seen in Starling City. They also used bows and swords. They remained unaffected by the gunfire directed against them. He approved.
Hisan's group moved to clear the office building. It was in this building they found General Matthew Shrieve smoking a cigar. Shrieve casually sat behind his desk. He was ignoring the chaos outside. He looked resigned to his own death. He knew his compound was falling. The first reports of the attack had stopped. The last was a scream in mid call. But his plans were in motion. He had seen the news of the deaths in the market and the chaos in Hong Kong. He could be satisfied with that.
"About time you showed up, Yamashiro," Shrieve barked grumpily. "My men have had a hell of a time trying to find you and that little pixie of a wife of yours."
Maseo shot Shrieve in the leg. While he felt gratified at the action, his purpose was to stop Shrieve from retrieving the gun he had hidden. His actions were obvious. He pushed his desk further away. The gun had fallen out of reach of the general. "Nice try, General," Maseo said as he picked up the gun. "We have a few questions," he said.
"Like why did I do this?" Shrieve asked as he continued to goad Maseo. "I'll gladly tell you that. China is too big. Too strong a military power. They own too much of the USA. I won't stand for that," he declared fanatically.
"We already know why you did this," Maseo replied. "We even know about your vaccine. We want to know about the cure."
"The cure," Shrieve said with caution. He was calculating how best to manipulate Maseo.
"You made a vaccine. You made a cure. Where is it?" Maseo declared with hope in his eyes.
"Of course," Shrieve replied, making note of Maseo's hope. "It's in my safe. We didn't make a lot of it."
"Open it," Maseo demanded.
"Why should I?" Shrieve asked.
Maseo responded by pulling the injured general out of the chair and pinning his left hand on the floor. Then he shot off the man's pinky finger.
"I'll do it," Shrieve gasped in pain.
Maseo dragged him over to the safe. Shrieve typed in his code and the safe swung open. Maseo pulled the general away before he could touch anything.
"It's right there," Shrieve said. "Those bottles." He pointed out a row of vials on the bottom shelf.
Mei stepped forward and pulled out the bottles before reading the names on the vials. She looked at Maseo. "He is lying. This is insulin medication. If it was the cure, it would not have generic labels." She checked the other vials. They were all the same. She shook her head. "It is all the same," she replied.
Shrieve started to laugh as the hope fell from Maseo's eyes. Maseo punched him several times before Hisan pulled him away. "Do not give evil the pleasure of your pain. Let us end it instead. Replace his evil with death," Hisan told him.
"Gladly," Maseo replied. "I hope you burn in hell." Maseo shot Shrieve in the head. Shrieve's brains spilled out the back of his skull. Maseo continued to stare at Shrieve's body for a few minutes before he turned to the others. "I need to return to Tatsu and Akio," Maseo said solemnly.
"I can take him," Mei said. She could be of more use in helping relieve Akio of pain.
Hisan nodded. "Yes, you should be with your family," he told Maseo. "Dafdae, go with them. We will need the van returned."
"It will be done, Hisan," Dafdae said as she stood to one side.
Once they had left, Hisan turned to Sah-him. "Let us finish cleaning this compound of evil," he told Sah-him.
"It will be done," Sah-him replied.
~AU~AU~AU~AU~AU~AU~
CHINA, HONG KONG - VARIOUS: 25 JUN 2015
The public service announcement blared on all radio and the television stations. =A State of Emergency has been declared. Return to your homes. More news will be issued when it is available.= The message was repeated in Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, and Korean in addition to other languages. Then the message would start again in Chinese.
The streets cleared of moving people within an hour after the compound was cleaned the League. The dead stood watch over the streets of Hong Kong. The roads were mostly clear. The few times the van had to stop, it was to move a fallen body from the street or a stopped car with a victim inside.
The League spread through Hong Kong. They found all remaining members of Shrieve's faction. They were easy to find. They were vaccinated and were moving in the city. The citizens of Hong Kong were afraid and had barricaded themselves in their homes. They were not moving with evil intent in the city.
Once the last of Shrieve's faction removed, the League retreated to the shadows. Hisan and his students returned to the small pharmacy where they left the Yamashiros. Akio had died in the arms of his parents. Tatsu was crying and singing a Japanese lullaby as she rocked the body of her son. Maseo was looking grave as he held the chilling hand of his only child. Mei looked on with grief as the boy she had come to care for had passed as painlessly as she could make it.
Hisan took in the sight with his own grief a familiar presence. His reason for joining the League was not too different from that of these parents. His whole family was slaughtered by a drug lord. A drug lord considered too small to pursue by the government. The League had saved him. He knew that vengeance would not serve their pain. They had their justice. It would not stop the heartache. He knew that pain would never leave them.
"There is a man who has survived the plague," Hisan told them as he approached. The League had found this man as he struggled to make sense of the death and dead around him. He was doing what he knew. He was cremating the bodies of the dead. He did his best to identify them. But he knew that the dead were a risk of spreading the plague. "He is cremating the bodies of the dead. He would benefit from completing this service for someone who has living loved ones." The man and the parents could benefit from this interaction. To give the man hope and the parents closure.
Tatsu looked up. "Others have survived?" she asked quietly.
Hisan nodded sadly.
"It is the way of nature," Mei replied. "No matter how deadly the contagion, some will always survive it. They will pass that ability on to their children. It is how we have survived great plagues in the past."
"Do we know how many survived?" Maseo asked with his eyes on Akio.
"My people are looking," Hisan replied. "The People's Republic of China has sealed the area. They are not allowing anyone in to look yet. Many people on the outside edges of the harbor survived. There are more people who survived at the mountains as well. My people are mapping the survivors they have found."
"The ocean breeze may have helped disperse the contagion, but it also helped dilute it," Mei replied as she considered the distribution. "The ones near the mountain did not receive enough of the virus to get sick. It is like how we were vaccinated. A small dose to teach our bodies how to defeat the virus. I would worry about the ones near the harbor. They were not exposed. They will still be susceptible to this plague."
"You seem to know quite a bit about this, Mei," Sah-him said.
Mei smiled at him. "I am a medical student. Fyers interrupted my studies. But I was able to continue when I returned," she replied. "I decided to focus on trauma because of our experience. But a doctor needs to know about diseases as well."
"Your studies have served us well during this tragedy," Tatsu said. "I would like to keep a part of Akio with me." She looked at Hisan. "Take us to this survivor."
"Come," Hisan said.
Maseo picked up the body of Akio with Tatsu close to him and they followed Hisan out of the pharmacy.
~AU~AU~AU~AU~AU~AU~
CHINA, HONG KONG - STREET: 29 JUN 2013
Sah-him and Dafdae went all throughout Hong Kong the rest of the week. They were to assist the survivors of the plague. To return to some semblance of normal to the people of Hong Kong.
Most of the people were in some form of shock. By the second day, the People's Republic of China send in emergency response teams. They wore full hazmat suits. China felt that enough of the biological agent had dispersed. But those first responders are still protected. By that time, Hisan's people had vaccinated the remaining survivors. One of the surviving physicians explained the vaccine. The physician provided the teams with a sample of the vaccine.
The League spent hours clearing the main roads through Hong Kong. They set the bodies to the side of the road where they had fallen. They pushed the crashed vehicles off the main roads. They knew the emergency response teams would need access to the whole city. They had cleared their safe houses of all League material. All the League material was stored on their plane. When China resumed allowing flights, their plane fled in the turmoil of arriving first responders.
The rest of the League members finished out the week in Hong Kong. Hiding in plain sight. Tatsu and Maseo were despondent. The loss of Akio had hit them both very hard. Maseo had taken to moving the bodies of the fallen plague victims. He avoided Tatsu. Tatsu relied heavily on Mei for emotional support, since her husband was nowhere to be found. Finally, Tatsu had recovered enough in her grief to seek out Maseo. She had enough of Maseo avoiding her.
Tatsu strode toward the group of men moving the fallen bodies to the side of the road. She could see Maseo with Sah-him and Hisan.
"Maseo!" Tatsu called as she neared him. =I must speak with you,= she declared in Japanese.
"Tatsu," Maseo replied, sounding empty. =I have nothing to say,= he replied in Japanese.
=You do not have to say anything,= Tatsu replied. =I want my husband to hold me. To be with me. I need you, Maseo. I love you.=
=I am not worthy of your love,= Maseo replied. =When I am with you, I am only reminded of how I failed my family. How I failed our son. I cannot be with you.=
Tatsu let her tears fall from her eyes. She watched Maseo return to the bodies of the fallen. She could see how he was using the work to keep moving.
=I am responsible for this,= Maseo said. =I am only a shadow of myself.=
=I will always love you, my husband,= Tatsu replied. =Conquer the self and you will conquer your opponent,= she quoted a Japanese proverb to him.
=Any ground is good enough to be buried in,= Maseo replied in a second Japanese proverb.
Tatsu sobbed. =I will wait for you, Maseo,= Tatsu told him. =Come to me when you are ready.= Then she turned and walked away from him with her shoulders shaking in grief. For her son, for her love, and for her marriage.
Hisan watched as both Tatsu and Maseo split apart. Maseo didn't even look at Tatsu as she walked away. He rejects the comfort of his wife. Yet he knows that she lives, he thought sadly. He feels responsible for this tragedy. But he is not. He did not cause this evil. He worked to stop it. Perhaps, he can channel his grief as I did. He has seen how we work. He has worked with us.
"Maseo," Hisan said while reaching out a hand in comfort. "I cannot offer you what you seek. No one can. But I can offer you a purpose. I can offer you a place to stop evil. You have worked with Sah-him, Dafdae, and I. Would you be willing to use your skills and knowledge to preserve balance? To stop evil?" he asked.
Maseo looked at Hisan and then at Sah-him. "You are training him, correct?" he asked.
"Yes," Hisan replied. "Sah-him and Dafdae were accepted by our people. We are approaching their sixth month of training."
"You... you try to stop this…" Maseo waved his arm at all the dead bodies lined up in the street.
"Yes," Hisan replied. "It is our purpose."
"Then yes," Maseo replied. "I will go with you. I will see if your people will accept me." He looked down at his feet. "I cannot end my own life. But I have no desire to keep living. I intend to be useful. To have a purpose would be useful."
"Very well," Hisan replied. "We are leaving tonight. I will introduce you to the others this evening. You will not start training until the new year. You will have time to reflect on your loss. I hope the Source can help you find a better path… like I did."
~AU~AU~AU~AU~AU~AU~
