Chapter 10: Punishment for a Thief
Chapter 10: Punishment for a Thief
Chapter 10: Punishment for a Thief
HEAVENLY DEMON OF THE DEAD GATE
Volume 1: Risen from Suicide
***
Some men enter a room and the temperature drops. Others enter and the temperature stays exactly the same, which is worse.
Gorman Tan was the second kind.
He crouched beside Yun Zhou with the unhurried ease of a man inspecting a leaky pipe, one hand on his knee, the other still resting against the pulse in Yun Zhou’s neck. Up close, he smelled of sandalwood and clean linen. His charcoal suit had not a single wrinkle. His cufflinks were plain silver, understated, and probably cost more than everything in Yun Zhou’s apartment.
“Easy,” Gorman said. “Don’t try to sit up. You’ve been holding your breath for a very long time.”
Yun Zhou coughed. It was a real cough, wet and ragged, and he let it come. His body shuddered. A thin line of saliva ran down his chin.
Mask first. Everything else second.
He let his eyes fill with tears, let his gaze skitter from Gorman’s face to Marlo’s to the unconscious blur of the baton man and back again, wild and unfocused. He curled one hand against his chest. His fingers trembled.
“I... I didn’t... please...” The words came out in broken pieces. “I didn’t do anything. He... he was going to...”
“Shh.”
Gorman’s voice was soft. Almost kind. But the fingers on Yun Zhou’s neck didn’t move.
He’s still measuring my pulse.
Fast. Frightened. Appropriate.
Yun Zhou let his heartbeat race, and, slowly, let it settle back into a rhythm that said: I am a boy who has been through something terrible and is trying to calm down.
Do not overact. He’s a man who has watched a thousand liars. Give him one hundred percent of the truth he can see and zero percent of the truth he can’t.
At last Gorman withdrew his hand, wiped his fingertips on a pale handkerchief, and rose to his full height.
“Dong,” he said, glancing at the baton man. “How’s the arm?”
The baton man, face pressed against the concrete, let out a muffled groan.
“Broken?” Gorman asked. “No. Nerve damage, I think. That is very precise work for a boy who can barely stand.” He tilted his head slightly. “Lucky, wouldn’t you say, Marlo?”
***
Marlo hadn’t moved.
He stood with his back to the dumpster, the knife still dangling from his right hand, his face the color of old paper. Sweat had soaked through his collar. The gold ring on his finger caught the dull morning light and flashed once.
“Boss,” he said. His voice came out thin and squeaky. “Boss, I can explain.”
“Can you?”
“The kid... he went crazy. He attacked Dong. I only drew the knife because...”
“Because he was a threat,” Gorman said mildly. “To two grown men. One of whom is carrying a steel baton and outweighs him by a hundred pounds.”
Marlo opened his mouth. Closed it.
Gorman glanced down at the knife in Marlo’s hand, then back up at his face. He didn’t blink.
“Put it away.”
Marlo fumbled the blade shut and shoved it into his jacket. His hand was shaking so hard that it took him three tries.
Fear. Pure, unfiltered fear.
Yun Zhou, still on the ground and still trembling, let a faint thread of Oculus brush against Marlo’s mind. It was almost too easy.
...he knows he knows he knows, the locker the locker the locker oh god...
...maybe it’s not that. Maybe it’s about the kid. He doesn’t know about the locker. He can’t...
...stay calm. Stay calm. Say nothing...
A dizzy flash of pain bloomed behind Yun Zhou’s right eye, and a drop of warmth slid out of his nose. He smeared it away with the back of his hand, as though wiping tears.
Not good. The body is nearly empty.
I need him to move quickly.
***
Two more men appeared at the mouth of the alley.
They had come in the black sedan, the one with the smooth engine. Both wore dark suits and had the matching blank expressions of professional bodyguards. One was tall and lean, with a scar along his jaw. The other was shorter, built like a refrigerator, with a flat nose and a tablet computer tucked under one arm.
“Boss,” the tall one said. “We’re ready.”
“Good.” Gorman didn’t turn. “Mr. Ho, the keys?”
The shorter man stepped forward and held out his open palm toward Marlo.
Marlo stared at it.
“Keys,” Mr. Ho repeated, in a voice like gravel in a bucket. “To your car. Your apartment. Your office desk. Your lockers.”
Lockers.
The word hung in the air like a held breath.
Marlo’s face did something Yun Zhou had been waiting to see for six days. It cracked. Not dramatically, not with a scream or a sob, but in a dozen tiny places at once: a tremor in the lower lip, a flicker at the corner of the eye, a small, helpless twitch of the jaw.
“Boss...” he said. “Boss, I don’t know what...”
“I received a message yesterday,” Gorman said, still without looking at him. “A rather good one. Clumsy. Honest. Mentioned a particular locker at Eastgate Station. Number two-hundred-fourteen.”
Marlo made a small, strangled noise.
“I did what any reasonable man would do,” Gorman continued. “I sent Mr. Ho to look.”
Marlo’s knees began to give.
“And you know what he found?”
Silence.
“Neither do I,” Gorman said gently. “Because I asked him not to open it. I wanted to ask you first.” A faint smile touched his lips. “Marlo, is there anything in locker two-hundred-fourteen that you’d like to tell me about before we go and look together?”
***
For one long second, nobody moved.
The wind pushed a crumpled flyer across the alley. Somewhere in the distance, a delivery truck backed up, its alarm beeping steadily.
Marlo’s eyes darted, left, right, toward the street, toward the van at the far end of the alley, toward the boy lying on the ground. They landed on Yun Zhou.
And in them, for the first time, Yun Zhou saw understanding.
A flicker. Faint, ugly, incomplete. The thought rose through the panic like a body surfacing in a lake.
...the kid...
...he was at the pillar... I thought I saw... no, impossible, he can barely walk...
...the kid knew. The kid knew all along...
Marlo opened his mouth, and Yun Zhou knew, with perfect, cold certainty, what he was about to say.
“It was him. He sent the message. He’s the one who...”
Exactly.
And a cornered man pointing at a trembling, half-dead boy with a rope scar around his neck will sound like exactly what he is: a desperate liar looking for someone to blame.
Yun Zhou drew in a shaky, tearful breath. He pushed himself up on one elbow and looked at Gorman, wide-eyed, pleading.
“Please,” he whispered, so softly that Marlo’s voice was already rising over it. “I don’t know what any of this is about. I just wanted to go to the clinic and... and they said...”
“It was him!” Marlo burst out. “Boss, it was him! The kid, he’s been spying on me! He’s got photos, he’s been following me, he’s the one who...”
“Marlo.”
Gorman’s voice cut through the shouting like a scalpel through silk.
“Did you hear what he just said?”
Marlo froze.
“‘I just wanted to go to the clinic,’” Gorman repeated, almost to himself. “‘And they said.’” He turned his head slowly and looked at the unconscious baton man, then at the van at the end of the alley, then, at last, at Marlo. “Said what, exactly? And who is ‘they’?”
The silence that followed was very quiet.
Oh, Yun Zhou thought, with a distant, pleased admiration. That’s very, very good.
A single sentence. A deliberate slip, dressed up as childish naivety. And Gorman, who never missed a detail, pounced on it like a cat on a moving string.
Now Gorman isn’t asking whether the boy sent the message. He’s asking what Marlo was planning to do with the boy.
Which is a very different crime.
***
Marlo tried to speak. Nothing came out.
“The clinic,” Gorman said softly. “Interesting. I seem to recall an arrangement, one that I have repeatedly told my staff is not to be used on debtors under my protection without my express approval.”
“Boss, I—”
“Mr. Ho.”
The shorter man stepped forward and caught Marlo by the arm. Not roughly. Almost courteously, like a waiter helping a drunk guest out of a restaurant.
“Hands,” Mr. Ho said.
Marlo pulled back. “No. Wait. Wait, wait, I can pay it back. All of it. I can pay it all back, I swear, I just need...”
“Hands.”
The tall bodyguard moved around behind him. A pair of plastic ties appeared as if by magic. Marlo struggled for about two seconds, then stopped. His shoulders sagged. His head dropped.
The gold ring on his right hand flashed again, bright and absurd against the gray alley.
“The ring,” Gorman said, as though noticing it for the first time. “Take it.”
Mr. Ho tugged it off Marlo’s finger with a quick twist and dropped it into a small plastic bag. Then he did the same with the watch.
“Fake,” he said, glancing at it. “Cheap one.”
“I thought it might be,” Gorman said.
Marlo made a small, broken sound, half laugh and half sob.
A new ring. A fake watch. Both bought with stolen money to feel like a bigger man.
And now the first things to go.
Yun Zhou lay on the cold concrete, silent and shivering, and let himself feel the faintest, tiniest flicker of satisfaction. It was a small thing, a pinch of salt on a very bland meal.
That’s two for two, he thought. The thief is caught. The boss is paranoid. And not a single person in this alley has any idea that the whole thing was built from a nine-dollar phone and a few keystrokes.
***
Gorman gave a quiet instruction to Mr. Ho. The words were too soft for Yun Zhou to catch, but the effect was visible: the bodyguard nodded once, took Marlo by the elbow, and led him toward the sedan.
Marlo didn’t resist.
At the mouth of the alley, he stopped.
He turned his head. Just slightly, just enough that Yun Zhou could see his profile. His face was slack, empty, gray, the face of a man whose life had just been divided into a before and an after.
He looked directly at Yun Zhou.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then Marlo’s lips moved. Soundless. Four words.
You did this. Why?
Yun Zhou met his gaze.
He didn’t smile. He didn’t gloat. He simply let the mask slip, just for a single second, just enough.
The wet eyes dried. The tremor in his lips stilled. The sagging shoulders straightened. And in place of the weeping boy there was something else, something calm, level, and impossibly old.
Marlo’s face went white.
Then Mr. Ho pushed him forward, and the car door closed, and the sedan’s smooth engine hummed to life and rolled out of the alley.
The mask went back on.
Yun Zhou dropped his eyes and let out a small, ragged sob, as though the whole terrifying morning had finally caught up with him.
He saw, he thought, almost idly. For one second. Not enough to prove anything. Not enough for anyone to believe him.
But enough to keep him awake at night.
Good.
***
“Dong needs a doctor,” Gorman said.
The tall bodyguard nodded and hauled the groaning baton man to his feet, draping the good arm across his shoulders. They shuffled toward the van.
Lin, still behind the wheel, stared at them wide-eyed through the windshield.
“You,” Gorman said, in the same polite tone. “Driver.”
Lin flinched so hard the van rocked.
“Take him to Dr. Pak’s clinic. The legitimate one. Mr. Ho will send you the address.”
“Y-yes, sir.”
“And Lin.”
“Sir?”
“We’ll talk later.”
Lin’s face went the color of chalk. He nodded and put the van in gear.
He’s going to be fine, Yun Zhou thought. He hasn’t done anything Gorman doesn’t already know about.
And if he is in trouble, I’ll have to fix that.
Strange. I’m already thinking of him as an investment.
The van rumbled out of the alley, taking the injured man and the last of the tension with it. The alley fell quiet. A pigeon landed on the dumpster, cocked its head, and flew off again.
Only two people remained.
***
Gorman Tan stood very still for a moment, his hands clasped behind his back, looking at the empty space where the sedan had been. Then he turned, slowly, and looked at Yun Zhou.
The smile was gone.
What replaced it was something harder to name. It wasn’t hostility. It wasn’t suspicion, not exactly. It was the look of a man who has just noticed a faint, unfamiliar sound in a house he thought he knew by heart.
Yun Zhou stayed on the ground. He kept his posture loose, his breathing uneven, his eyes wet. The very picture of a boy still recovering from shock.
Say nothing. Let him fill the silence.
The first person to speak is the one who loses.
Gorman crouched again. This time he sat on his heels, like a man preparing to have a long conversation. He rested his forearms across his knees and tilted his head.
The morning light fell across his face, catching in the silver at his temples.
“Yun Zhou,” he said. “Twenty-one. Hunter, rank E. Parents deceased, no siblings. Forty-eight million in outstanding balance, accruing. Attempted suicide by hanging, three nights ago.” A tiny pause. “Ah. I see you didn’t succeed.”
Yun Zhou’s lip trembled.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“Don’t be.” Gorman’s tone was almost warm. “I’m glad. It would have been a terrible waste.”
He reached out and, with one finger, tilted Yun Zhou’s chin up until their eyes met.
Yun Zhou’s heart did not skip a beat. His pulse stayed exactly where he wanted it. But something deep behind his sternum, that old, cold hook, gave a tiny, restless tug.
Oculus.
He pushed, gently, a hair’s breadth.
Nothing.
Not silence. Not the void he’d felt with the dead rat. Something else entirely. A smooth, polished wall, calm and utterly closed, like glass in a window. He could see that there was a mind behind it. He couldn’t see a single thing inside.
A trained mind. Or one so disciplined it might as well be.
Yun Zhou’s face stayed soft. Inside, every instinct he had snapped to attention.
This man isn’t like Marlo.
This one is dangerous.
Gorman studied him for another moment, and then he smiled again, thin and patient and entirely without warmth.
“Tell me something, Zhou,” he said softly.
“Y-yes, sir?”
“That message I received yesterday. The one that led me to the locker.”
Yun Zhou blinked, wide and innocent.
“It was very well written,” Gorman said. “The voice was frightened and convincing. The details were just specific enough, and the typos were just natural enough. It took me nearly an hour to realize that it wasn’t from a stallholder at all.”
The alley seemed very quiet.
“So,” said Gorman, “I’ll ask you directly, and I’ll only ask once.”
His eyes, calm and bottomless, did not leave Yun Zhou’s face.
“Was it you who sent it?”
***
To be continued in Chapter 11: “Gorman”