The plan was simple. Make up an experimental cure, get Sifu Zhang to agree to take it and then remove the cancer into L2. As usual, the hard part was implementing the plan. I spent all of Sunday night working out each step and creating alternatives for when things didn’t go according to plan, just like I’d seen Shauna do. My biggest stumbling block was that I didn’t know enough about Sifu Zhang and it’s much harder to manipulate someone when you can’t guess how they’ll react to certain information. Hell, I didn’t even know his first name.

Waking up at six am on Monday morning really sucked. I’d had a good eight hours of sleep, but I still felt like I’d been run over by a truck. A shower woke me up and I was soon out the door and heading to the McDonald’s on Finley Avenue to get five vanilla milkshakes. I was lucky because their milkshake machine was working so I didn’t have to drive to the one in the mall and see if their machine worked. Once I had the shakes, I placed them in the passenger seat of my truck and shifted them to L1, where they’d stay cold and frosty until I brought the back to reality. That was one of the perks of the stasis effect in L1 and L2; hot stays hot and cold stays cold. I could leave a crisp apple in L1 for ten years and it’ll be just as crisp when I brought it back to reality. I’d been using that trick when drinking hot chocolate at home lately. It was soooo good.

By this time, I only had to wait a few minutes until the hardware store was open and I went in to buy a roll of plastic tarp. Having everything I needed to get started, I shifted the car to L2 and drove to Uncle Magnum’s. At the school, I walked in through the front window facade which was absent in L2 and I unrolled the tarps across the front section of the main classroom and also covered the front of the smaller training room. I didn’t know for certain where Sifu Zhang would be sitting for our meditation sessions, but I covered the most likely places.

It wasn’t much in terms of preparation. Milkshakes and a tarp. However, those were just the physical elements of the plan. Most of the plan involved my sales pitch and the cancer removal. As it was, this was a much more complicated plan that I needed. I could have easily slipped into Sifu Zhang’s room while he was sleeping, brought him into L1 and removed the cancer over the course of a week. No one would have been the wiser. If Sifu got better, it would be hailed as a miracle and he would stay a bit longer before going back to Raleigh and his old life.

Only, I didn’t want him to go back to his old life. I wanted him to stay here where I could make sure that the cancer didn’t come back and where he and Uncle Magnum could work together again. Uncle Magnum left his teacher to join us when dad and I moved here and I always felt bad that he’d given up that part of his life for me. This was my chance to even the scales a bit. Also, I had some other plans for Sifu Zhang. Yes, I was manipulating the course of Sifu’s life, but it was a life that he had prepared himself to leave already.

Since I was already in the perfect place for it, I shifted to R1 and started my stretching routine. The shower had done a good job in waking me up, but my muscles were still stiff from yesterday’s evaluation and the warm-up would loosen them right up. The field that I’d wrapped around the living area upstairs soon showed me that both Uncle Magnum and Sifu Zhang were up and moving around and I had only done a few knee bends before they came downstairs and started their own warm up.

I watched the greyed-out versions of them go through the usual warm-up routine and I followed along. Despite his physical deterioration, Sifu Zhang moved well. A lifetime of muscle memory showing through the pain and fatigue that he must be felt. Before I knew it, they had moved on to their forms and I wrapped them each in field to evaluate their styles and how they differed from each other. I was probably setting myself up for more raised eyebrows from them the next time they saw me doing the forms, as I planned to incorporate Sifu Zhang’s movements into my own.

Much like the field could send me scanned data on thousands of feet of rock and I’d be able to remember it fully, I was absorbing the information about their movements and could review those movements later with perfect recall. The field acted as an external hard drive that gave me a seemingly photographic memory for anything that I scanned with it. Unfortunately, photographic memory was not the same as muscle memory and I still had to practice a lot to turn my knowledge into mastery. I’d noticed though that I only needed a fraction of the practice time that I used to need to reach mastery. That was like a huge bonus on top of an already massive bonus and I truly appreciated it.

The exciting part for me happened when I got to watch them do a series of forms that I’d never seen before. Uncle Magnum always made it a point to only let me see the forms leading up to red belt. He said that he didn’t want me to get distracted and that I’d see more forms when I was ready. I guess the cat was out of the bag now, because I was effectively recording each of the new forms and could practice them whenever I wanted to. I even got to watch Sifu Zhang correct Uncle Magnum’s forms and proceed to do several forms on his own, ones that even Uncle Magnum hadn’t learned yet. It felt like I had discovered a lost treasure chest full of books that had been presumed lost for all eternity.

After the forms, Uncle Magnum and Sifu Zhang did some attack and defend exercises, including ‘sticky hands’, and finished off with some practice on the dummies. I followed all the movements with my field and learned a lot. They had such fluidity to their movements. Watching them made me feel that my movements were like those of a troll at a ballet recital. I had a feeling that Sifu Zhang would be keeping me busy for quite awhile.

Having finished my spying for the day, I reappeared in reality just outside the front door to the school and walked in. My plan had been to talk to Sifu Zhang alone, but I changed my mind over the past hour as I’d watched them training together. Where Sifu Zhang was concerned, I didn’t want to sneak behind Uncle Magnum’s back. He’d know everything up front, except for the part where it would be my abilities removing the cancer and not some experimental drug. Oh, and I’d have to create a whole convoluted lie to make him believe it. Yeah, no contradiction there.

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I’d caught the two of them sitting down cross-legged and about to start a cool down meditation. “Before you start, Sifu Zhang, I was hoping to take a few minutes of your time and make you an offer.”

“You have my complete attention.”

“Thank you. Last night you explained that your cancer had spread to some of your other organs and there wasn’t anything more the doctors could do for you. You transferred your school to your successor and you’ve said your goodbyes. We are your last stop and you don’t expect to be here long.”

“That is a fair summation, Abby.”

“What if there’s a small chance for another outcome? Would you take it? Or have you accepted your fate?”

Uncle Magnum interrupted. “Abby! This is not something…”

“It’s ok, Paul. I will answer her. Abby, I have been a student of Kung Fu all of my life. At it’s most basic level, Kung Fu is a disciple that requires dedication and perseverance. You are in constant battle with yourself; to overcome your fears, your worries, your doubts, your laziness, and all of the other obstacles that you put before yourself. In this regard, I have fought my whole life against myself, for I am my greatest opponent. This cancer is my own body fighting me and I have fought it using every technique that I’ve learned over a lifetime. Unfortunately, I cannot use willpower and perseverance to force the cancer away and I’ve exhausted all the medical options available. With chemotherapy and drug cocktails I can extend my life a few more months, but it will not be a life worth living. At least not for me. Fighting is what I do and if I had the opportunity, I would continue to do so.”

With a mental deep breath, I began my spiel. “A few months ago, I watched a seven-year-old boy with cancer, my friend Evan, wither away and die from cancer. At the time, I didn’t know enough or have the resources to stop it from happening. Now though, I know more and I have a lot more resources. Since Evan’s death, I’ve been using those resources to find out more about new experimental drugs being developed. I’ve made contacts in research labs all over the world who let me know if they have anything interesting. For your type of cancer and the late stage that it’s in, there is nothing in development that would work, but there is something that has already been developed and mostly abandoned that might work.”

“I don’t understand. If it worked, then it wouldn’t have been abandoned.”, Uncle Magnum said.

“Oooh, look who knows so much. There’s a big difference between mostly abandoned and all abandoned.” I paused for a moment for Uncle Magnum’s facepalm at yet another Princess Bride reference. “Four years ago, a research lab in California created a drug that was tested on three late stage pancreatic cancer patients. One patient survived and got better.”

“The chances of surviving from this cancer is effectively zero. One in three is much better. Why would they abandon the drug?”, Sifu Zhang asked.

“Because they couldn’t make it in large quantities, and it was extremely expensive and time consuming to make in the gram quantities. They tried for over a year, but there was not way to mass produce it. One course of treatment took over three months to produce and the final price would bankrupt most people.”

“If they are not producing it and it takes three months to make, I cannot see it doing me any good, Abby. I do not have three months.”

“Yes, but the story doesn’t end there. When the drug failed, the company went bankrupt and one of their researchers bought the equipment for next to nothing and set up the equipment in his basement. He wanted to have the means to create the drug if anyone he knew ever needed it. Once he had one course of treatment ready though, he decided to keep making more and sell it to people who wanted a thirty-three percent chance at surviving.”

Uncle Magnum asked the key question. “How expensive is it?”

“Very. The entire course of treatment is over half a million dollars.”

“Even before I gave my school away, I could not have afforded this treatment.”

“I can and that’s where my offer comes in.” At these words, Sifu Zhang looked questioningly at Uncle Magnum, who nodded solemnly. Sifu raised his eyebrows in surprise and turned back to me.

“Please go on.”

“I’ll buy the drug and you take it. You’ll have a one in three chance of survival. If you survive, I’d like you to stay in town and spend half your time teaching with Uncle Magnum and half your time teaching at Hannah’s Home, the charity organization that I started. I can’t speak as to what you’d get paid here, but the foundation can offer you an ok salary and a place to live.”

“What does the foundation do?”

“Hannah’s Home was named after my mother, who was kidnapped over twelve years ago. The foundation was designed to help the victims of human trafficking and their families get back to their old lives or to start new ones. Among other things, we’ll offer counseling services, medical evaluations, career training, housing, documentation, and legal assistance. We’ll even assist with travel expenses to get the survivors back home. I was hoping that you could design and teach a targeted self-defense class so that the survivors will have a better shot at defending themselves if they’re ever in a similar situation to the one where they were taken. At the very least it will help them get regain enough confidence to move forward with their lives. I’d also like you to teach classic Kung Fu to those that want it, including our staff. I don’t expect many of our guests to stay longer than a month, but some may take to it and decide to continue when they go back home.”

“Your foundation has a worthy mission and if the treatment works, I agree to your terms.”

“Really? Just like that? You don’t want to think about it?”

“I did. If I survive, I will be doing exactly what I’d like to be doing. The only person who has a downside here is you. If I don’t survive, you will have wasted a lot of money.”

“Not true. I will have spent it trying to save my uncles’ friend and mentor. I can make more money. I can’t make another Sifu Zhang.”

“In that case, I really hope I survive, if only to see what you’ll do next.”

“Hold on a minute, Sifu. You don’t know Abby that well. Before you see what she’s going to do next, you need to see what she just did now. I suspect that you’ve been had. Abby, what would you have done if he’d refused your offer?” Uncle Magnum was looking me straight into the eyes and I could see a the corners of his lips twitch into a smile before he got them in control.

“Well…the treatment doses are arriving by special courier this afternoon, so I suppose I would have had to come over everyday and sneak it into whatever he was drinking at the time.”

“You would have disregarded my wishes on the matter?”, Sifu asked, astonished.

“You could look at it that way, but I prefer to think of it like this. Do you force your students to do horse-stance and plank? Do you make them do push-ups? Hell, yes you do. You do it because you know that it’s good training for them, even if they can’t see it. This is the same thing and just because you would have been too stupid to decide to do the right thing, that doesn’t mean that I have to be stupid too.”

Uncle Magnum shook his head in amazement. “That’s my Abby! A facepalm from Sifu on your very first day with him. I’m impressed.”