The Year ‘35, 4th Month, 18th Day

– Fei Cui, Jae-dyn

Eastern Road, The Red District

4:27 AM

The uneven ground, layered with cracked glass, drying blood, and the dizzying spin of the red floodlights; were all blurring across his eyes.

His drubbed leg cricked unevenly at his hip, a sign of a bad cast and a few months of use when it should have been spent healing— so the bone hinged with a small limp as he walked.

Flecks and blots flickered into his vision. A common sight for a drunkard such as he.

“Do hold yourself together, Chet,” a voice hissed at him, a stark contrast to the hand that plastered reassuringly atop his hunched back. “I can’t have you soiling my crime scene.”

Chet groaned and swept the hair strands swinging across his forehead with a shake of his head. The mere gesture made his skull throb, and he hiccuped to conceal the rise of bile in his throat. “It’s your damn fault for calling me out here at this ungodly hour, Naomi.”

“Watch your mouth,” Naomi crossed her arms and bent closer to inspect the dead body lounging in front of them both. The man’s hair had begun to color gray, his eyes wide and bloodshot. Skin moist, throat swollen. Drowned, somehow, in the center of the city commons. “And that’s Lieutenant Sato to you.”

Chet gave a nonchalant grunt, and raised his nickel-plated camera up to his right eye. After adjusting the capstan knob, he flashed a photo of the man’s grotesquely bloated face onto the film. “We can’t all be employee of the month.”

Naomi rolled her eyes at him for the remark. “You always get like this. Can’t believe it’s been five years and…”

This was enough to make Chet shoot her a bitter scowl. “What?”

“Nothing.” She snapped in return, scratching at her ear. “Just bag the evidence. You’re already late enough.”

Chet knew to let the topic slip away from them both. Any more, and they might get into another fight. “Yeah, yeah. Can’t blame me, though. I haven’t been out in the field since the Massacre. Didn’t expect you to call me outta the blue like this.”

“Maybe I wanted you to see something.”

Chet scoffed, taking a bleary sweep of his surroundings. “Are the new guys givin’ you trouble? I can—”

His tongue dried when he shifted onto his knee, ready to snap another picture; when he caught sight of the small, pearly white pot in the man’s hand.

Naomi smirked at him, “Looks like someone left you a little gift.”

The lid of the ceramic pot had been lost somewhere; the rouge within having filled the container to the brim. He could tell from the sweet, overbearing smell alone.

Xi emanated from it like moonlight reflecting off a lake. On its surface, etched deep and clear— were the characters: Shen.

“It’s him,” Chet breathed, pocketing the camera into his garbs. “Is that why you called for me?”

“You can thank me by showing up to work without reeking like booze, Enforcer,” Naomi rolled her eyes and whistled. The sound echoed hauntingly over the bodies splayed across the road. All were stiff with age, the concrete road beneath them cracked from the battle.

Some still had their pistols clutched in their hands; the others with bright eyes and hued hair glistening with residual xi, as it melted back into the atmosphere. There were yellow evidence cards planted next to them, labeled with inky black numbers.

“Why would the Triads’ rouge distributors give a damn about Shen?” Chet asked.

“Dunno. Look at the mess they caused, though,” Naomi shrugged.

“Another turf war,” Chet murmured, ducking his head in ascent as one of the other Enforcers, a young man no older than twenty, hunkered down low and snapped a quick picture of one of the left-most bodies. It was still glowing a deep sage green aura— palms wet.

Chet could hazard a guess as to who had killed their main guy.

The young Enforcer shuffled closer, flinching when Chet cast his eye upon him. Still, he carried on, flashing a quick photo of the dead body by Naomi’s feet before shuffling away.

With this, Chet squinted and stared at the drowned man. “This is some kinda big shot, I’d guess.”

“I didn’t take you for the type who’d recognize him,” Naomi hummed pleasantly, lip curling into a cruel smile, “He’s famous around the Red District. Shoots burlesque picture shows— name’s Li… somethin’.”

“Roulan,” the kid with the camera supplied, a few feet away.

Naomi shooed him away with a cackle, teasing the poor boy in between breaths before turning back to Chet, “Guy was as pathetic as they come, though. Was probably channeling drugs from this district, all the way down to upper Iron Town. But he never partook of his own wares.”

“He was a supplier, then. I assume it wasn’t rouge, if the Militia already knows about him.”

“’Course not. The Triads only have one supplier for that, and we all know he’s as good as locked in a vault.” Naomi sighed, “No, Li dealt in the smaller stuff. Opium, cat’s-claw drops, laughing mushroom— he had labs all over Jae-dyn.”

“No surprise that he ended up here,” Chet scoffed. He slipped the rubber glove he wore off one of his hands so he could reach into his pocket. “Wonder what he did to get onto Banzai’s bad side if he was dragging in the dough. Or what this has to do with Shen.”

“I’ll get to that. We’ve been after Li for years. If he hadn’t been cleaning his trail as well as he did, we woulda gotten him,” Naomi muttered, pulling out a white lighter from her blazer as Chet slipped a thin cigarette into his hand, putting it up to his lips. “Probably a fall-out, if anything.”

He sneered, “It’s not like Banzai wouldn’t do this sort of thing without reason.”

“He had one this time,” Naomi looked down at the body with obvious disdain. “From what we gathered, Li had made a deal with a new fella. Some hotshot who just joined the Triads. Bastard doesn’t even have a record with us yet.”

Chet looked up at her with his mouth hung open. His thumb ran over the pot of rouge in his hand, feeling the smooth ceramic surface before he dropped it into his plastic evidence bag. “You mean—”

“That’s right,” Naomi leaned closer as she flicked her lighter to life, a blade of flame bursting from its tip. Chet let her singe the end of his cigarette into a red char. She whispered, “It’s just a hunch… but I think he’s been workin’ with Shen.”

Chet couldn’t help the sour note in his tone. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“I wanted to be sure. Anyways, I knew that if I even gave you a whiff about this story, you’d be jumpin’ my bones about getting Li Roulan sent off.” Naomi shook her head as she brought a cigarette to her own lips. “Doesn’t matter, though. Whatever Li was pumping his money into, there was no return on investment.”

“His money was wasted and the Triads didn’t get the drugs they wanted,” Chet ruminated aloud, barking out a laugh in realization. “The fucker was conned blind.”

“Exactly. I bet Li couldn’t even give them a name if he wanted to.”

“So, they offed the old man,” Chet pursed his lips in thought, “and the guy who’d swindled him…”

His words trailed off as he glared down at the ceramic pot, hanging inglouriously from the evidence bag. Shen.

Naomi smiled, teeth gleaming like that of a wolf’s in the faint light. “You can’t deny it. Whoever he is— he’s a genius.”

“He’s a fucking psycho,” Chet gritted, snapping his head to face her.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Naomi flinched violently, a clash of fear against her teasing grin. “Ah, yeah. Sorry.”

Chet lowered his voice as he carried on and gestured at the bodies. “None of this seems like his work, though.”

“How’dya mean?”

“You’re telling me that Shen’s been missing for five years— only to pop up outta nowhere to kill this schmuck and leave us a message?” Chet waved the ceramic pot in Naomi’s face. “Plus, none of this seems like the Beast’s Blessing. If Shen has the Beast, he wouldn’t be sending Triad scum to a fight.”

“Whatever you say, Enforcer. It could be a copycat for all I know. I never saw the Blessing in action like you did.” Naomi slapped his hand away from her. “I’m just stating the facts here.”

Chet stashed the pot into his blazer’s inner-breast pocket, sighing. “At least there were no civilians caught in the crossfire.”

“It’s the Ghost Festival tomorrow, so everyone was off preparing tonight. Seems like he planned this in advance.”

“Meticulous bastard.”

The two of them strolled past the bodies, Naomi pointing at an array of bullet shells with the tip of her boot. “You’d flatter the man, Chet.”

“No survivors, either.” Chet gazed around them, taking another photo.

“Actually, there is one. He’s the only one who made it out alive. Found the idiot hiding in a dumpster.” She shrugged, nodding toward the motorcar at the end of the road, parked by the curbside. “He hasn’t spoken a single word since we found him, though… he’s being held in—”

An ear-splitting bang rippled through the air, a wave of shrapnel and hot air billowing towards both Chet and Naomi. The Lieutenant gasped, already jetting down the street towards the sound.

“Damn!” she spat, voice barely audible over the uproar of the other Enforcers and the crackle of fire.

One of the motorcars had been split into two, metal speared apart, leather ripped at the seams. Black smoke was billowing into the air, a small group of Enforcers huddling by its side.

One of them was prone, on his back, and screeching in pain— it was the damn kid with the camera.

“Get away from there!” Naomi bellowed, waving towards the Enforcers, “the engine could burst!”

Chet let out a hiss of air through the slit of his teeth once he reached the crumpled motorcar. There was blood leaking onto the asphalt road as the Enforcers dragged their injured colleague from the blazing mess.

The kid’s leg was blown apart, the knee clearly shattered and the skin of his shin shredded apart. Naomi spat out, nearly automatic, “Apply a tourniquet, raise the leg. And for Xian’s sake— loosen his tie. He’s going into shock and he can’t breathe through that fucking thing.

Chet quickly shed his own blazer, leaning down to ball it up and shove it under the young Enforcer’s head. He whispered in a slow drawl as he saw the man’s eyes grow wide and fearful with panic, “You’ll be alright, kid. Just breathe with me— one, two… that's it.”

The young Enforcer followed along as well as he could as Chet began to take deep breaths in example, plastering his hand atop the other man's chest to ease its quickened rise and fall.

He had seen many a child before; perish just like this during Long Shore’s civil war. And he had learned well how to temper one’s panic before it could engulf one’s mind; speeding along the process of death.

His voice turned just a scant bit softer, as he muttered, “Steady on, kid.”

“The survivor escaped,” one of the Enforcers gasped at Naomi, eyeing the burning motorcar with a twisted frown as the other Enforcers leapt for the leather tourniquet they kept in one of the motorcars.

In a single breath, Chet got back to his feet, turned to Naomi, and said, “I’ll catch him.”

He didn’t stay to catch Naomi’s reply, already bounding down the alley; skipping past rotting garbage and skittering rats.

There was a patter of footsteps before him, his ears managing to discern it from his own footfalls.

Chet put his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Halt!”

And there— a flutter of a cloak, sleek and black, as though to obscure its wearer into the shadows. The alleyway was thinning, the walls shuttering closer. They would hit a dead end soon.

There was sewage waste overflowing from the old drainage gutters, rusty trashcans tipped over, the brick beneath Chet’s feet growing older and moldier by each bound and leap and step. Until he could finally catch glance of a figure, beyond the engulfing shadows on the alley.

The survivor’s cloak billowed before Chet’s eyes, and with a desperate lunge, the Enforcer tore his fingers into the fabric and pulled.

With this, the survivor stilled. Neither tripping nor falling— his feet were plastered flat on the ground. His aura was a beautiful sheen of royal purple.

“Enforcer Lahn, I’d presume,” the survivor drawled, voice lilting and smug in some juvenile sense.

Chet didn’t regale him with a response, and instead wrestled with the cloak’s hem, trying to drag the man into his grip. Keeping his breaths shallow and clipped; all to fend the glaring of his own aura in response.

No Enforcer was authorized to call upon their Cultivation abilities if the perpetrator had yet to inflict harm on their being. But most importantly of all, Chet had been locked behind a desk for five years. His Cultivation skills were more than rusty.

“I know you’re not above beating an ol’ criminal’s skull in,” the survivor laughed a little, sweeping a leg out to catch the side of Chet’s shin. “Why don’t you put me out of my misery, Enforcer?”

Chet was faster, though— and he performed a quick skip to raise his own foot above the survivor’s own; stepping down with all the force he could muster, pinning the latter’s leg to the brick path.

“Maybe…” the man breathed unevenly, clearly in pain. That didn’t make the sarcastic lilt in his voice lessen any more. “...You’ve always been playing along?”

“You are arrested under the name of Wўtai’s Ministry.” Chet grunted, pulling out a pair of cuffs. They would not be able to permanently hinder the survivor’s Phase, but it should deliver incredible discomfort to one’s mind— enough for them to lose all focus and unable to call upon their Cultivational abilities.

Again, the survivor spoke. “While I would love to do that, Enforcer, I’m sorry to say that I’ll have to take my leave. Your colleague there was more than ready to take me to your precinct. Plus, that fellow with the camera wouldn’t stop trying to peer at my face.”

And before Chet could slap the cuffs across the survivor’s wrist, he slammed his knee against Chet’s neck as he bent lower.

The cuffs slid out of his grasp, skidding behind them both.

Perhaps years spent behind the Militia’s desks had made his skills rusty. But Chet didn’t let himself dwell on that any longer, as he reached out for the cuffs; right when the survivor called out, “No… I’m only here to deliver a message. Lock me up, and you’ll be sure I’ll never speak it aloud.”

Chet’s eyes went wide, and he froze.

He could never be sure, and yet— the same way a fisherman could herald the coming of a storm, could stare at the shape of the clouds and discern their heaviness; this message, the survivor— he knew in some bone-deep way, was connected to him.

His grip loosened, though his fingers made no move to unlatch themselves.

When the survivor made no move to escape, even going as far as to offer the courtesy of weakening his own aura; Chet breathed, and said in as small a voice he could muster, “Are you working for… Shen?”

“What? Hell no!” the survivor laughed, rueful. Disgusted, appalled; as if the statement was the most offensive accusation he had ever heard. He grinned, now, as he added, “I want you to catch him.”

“You…” Chet felt the small weight in his trousers’ pocket seemingly grow heavier. “You caused all of this.”

The survivor moved in a brash manner, leaning against the wall in some feigned attempt at ease. His arms, though lean, were gangly with youth. Chet’s mind wandered towards his age, and the clear confidence he carried beyond his years.

Chet spat, “You killed Li Roulan! What… just to get to me?”

“Not exactly,” the other man shrugged with a languid smirk, “I just sicced them on one another.”

For a quick moment, all the pieces clicked into place. The man who had scammed Li Roulan, leading him to his death— Naomi had believed this to be caused by Shen… when in reality, it was this man before him.

The survivor continued to drawl cheekily, “I’ve been wondering about your identity for a long time, Enforcer. Especially after that whole Massacre fiasco. Things would have been easier for you if you hadn’t cared so much about your privacy…”

Chet flared with anger, the way it dawned upon him so violent it nearly shocked himself. “I kept my involvement under wraps to keep crazed lunatics like you from coming after me.”

“That’s true!” The survivor laughed heartily, then said, “Listen well, or I would have killed all those men for nothing.”

A pin could have dropped, and Chet would have been deafened. His jaw clenched, still upset. Either way, the survivor was now speaking—

“I know who Shen is.”

Chet’s chest was tight. “How can I be sure you’re telling the truth?”

“You can’t.” the survivor shrugged, “But it’s better than what you’ve been able to come up with these past five years, isn’t it?”

Bristling with a bitter swoop of his stomach, Chet ground out, “Talk.”

The survivor’s cloak was fluttered in a slight way by a passing gale, a shock of tan skin visible beneath. “By the Red Light District, there’s a little runner den— disguising itself as a bar. He’ll be there, emerging from the doors at exactly four in the afternoon tomorrow.”

Chet whispered in clear disbelief, “Shen?”

“In the flesh.”

“How do you know all of this?” he frowned.

“Let’s just say… I’ve got someone I need to protect from that monster.”

Chet hinged his mouth apart to reply, but flinched as a familiar voice echoed down the alleyway.

It was Naomi, her words warbling closer and closer. The survivor didn’t so much as breathe, standing resolute in Chet’s lasting grip on his cloak— until at last, and with a heavy sigh, the Enforcer loosened his aching fingers.

Chet was not the type to ignore a debt. He always paid in full, somehow.

“Thank you,” the survivor whispered lowly, stepping backwards a tad. But his wide grin was all the more audible in his voice as he said, “But I really didn’t expect all this chivalry.”

Before Chet could even so much as blink, there was a fist knocking into his face, so hard that his eyes rolled to the back of his head and his breath was knocked from his lungs. In his daze, he tripped over his own feet, and fell squarely to the brick ground.

He watched through bleary eyes and a headache worse than what his hangover had sported him as the survivor hopped to the sky with one graceful foot, and landed delicately on one of the roofs.

“Regards, from the Prince,” the boy called, darting off with a flutter of his cloak.

Chet was left staring after his shadow, even when Naomi had arrived to his side.