Chapter 3: The Collector

HEAVENLY DEMON OF THE DEAD GATE

Volume 1: Risen from Suicide

***

Marlo Chen didn’t wipe his boots.

He walked across the room like a man inspecting a property he’d already decided to repossess. His eyes moved over the cracked mirror, the sagging bed, the folding table, the three packs of instant ramen sitting on the counter. His lip curled.

“Place smells like a dead cat,” he said. “You know that? Eight months I’ve been coming here, and every time it smells worse.”

Behind him, the man with the steel baton snickered. The third one, the thin guy standing half a step back, didn’t laugh. He just stared at the floor and rubbed the back of his neck.

Yun Zhou stood by the wall with his shoulders hunched and his hand pressed over his throat.

It was a good pose. He’d built it in the last ten seconds, piece by piece. The hunch said I’m small. The hand over the scar said I’m ashamed. The way his eyes darted to the broken door and then away said I want to run, but I know I can’t.

What it did not say was that his heart rate was sixty-two beats per minute.

Too calm. Raise it.

He held his breath for three seconds. His pulse kicked up. A bead of sweat gathered at his temple, and he let it run.

“M-Marlo-ge,” he said. His voice cracked on the second syllable. “I was going to call you. I swear. I just—”

“You were going to call me.”

“Yes. I—”

“Looks like you were going to hang yourself, is what it looks like.”

Marlo’s gaze had landed on the dangling piece of rope. A slow grin spread across his face, and the sight of it made the thin man behind him wince.

“Damn,” Marlo said, almost admiringly. “You really did it, huh? Tried to skip out on me.”

Not out of concern, Yun Zhou noted, behind the trembling mask. He’s counting how much money would have disappeared with me.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Sorry.” Marlo tasted the word and found it lacking. “Forty-eight million, kid. Forty-eight. You know what that is? That’s not a debt. That’s a lifestyle. That’s a lot of people’s dinners.”

He walked in a slow circle around Yun Zhou, the way a butcher circles a cut of meat. The man with the baton drifted to the door and leaned against the frame, blocking the exit with his bulk.

Yun Zhou kept his head down.

***

Observation one: the ring.

It was on Marlo’s right hand, thick and gold, with a small red stone in the center. It had no scratches. No wear on the inside of the band. A man who wore a ring like that for years would have dull edges and a pale line on his finger. This was new. Bought within the last month.

Observation two: the watch.

A silver band, polished, with a dial that was just a little too busy. The second hand ticked in jumps. A real mechanical movement would sweep smoothly. He’d seen better counterfeits in the bazaars of his old life, and he’d been charged triple for the privilege.

Observation three: the briefcase.

The thin man was carrying it. Black leather, scuffed at the corners. And every time Marlo glanced at it, the thin man flinched.

Whatever’s in that case, it isn’t just paperwork.

Yun Zhou’s eyes moved under the curtain of his hair, quick and cold, cataloguing all of it. His face showed none of it. His face showed a boy about to be sick.

“Look at me,” Marlo said.

Yun Zhou looked up. His eyes were wet, wide, and red-rimmed. A perfect imitation of fear, made all the more convincing by the very real marks of last night’s rope.

Marlo studied him for a moment. Then, almost kindly, he reached out and patted his cheek.

“You know what the worst part is?” he said. “I actually like you, Zhou. You never gave me trouble. You never ran. You just kept saying ‘next week, next week.’ That’s the kind of debtor I respect.”

Liar.

“But next week came and went. And the boss is getting impatient. He’s asking me questions I don’t like.” Marlo’s voice dropped to something soft and almost sad. “Which means I have to start getting creative.”

He snapped his fingers.

The man at the door produced a folded sheet of paper and held it out. Marlo took it, smoothed it with exaggerated care, and turned it so Yun Zhou could read.

It was a price list. Neatly typed, with a company logo in the corner.

Kidney (healthy, under 25): 22,000,000.

Liver segment: 15,000,000.

Corneas (pair): 6,000,000.

“A guy I know,” Marlo said conversationally, “runs a clinic. No questions. Very clean. You’d be back on your feet in a month. Well. Most of you.”

The thin man made a small, strangled sound and looked at the ceiling.

Yun Zhou stared at the paper. Inside, something very old and very patient stirred.

Organ trafficking, run through a loan cooperative. He’s not threatening me with something he’d never do. He’s already done it to others.

Noted.

He let his lower lip tremble. A single tear rolled down his cheek and dripped off his chin.

“Please,” he said hoarsely. “Please, Marlo-ge. I’ll work. I’ll take any Gate, any shift. Anything. Just give me time.”

***

Outside the broken door, the morning had brightened. Through the open frame, past the rusted railing of the walkway, a giant LED screen on the building across the street flickered through its advertising loop.

A woman’s face filled the screen.

Even at that distance, even through the grime-streaked glass, the face was striking. Large, luminous eyes. A dazzling smile. Long caramel-colored hair that moved like silk in an invisible breeze. She raised a bottle of sparkling water toward the camera, winked, and in the corner, a line of glowing text read:

BAEK SOO-AH. Hunter. Idol. Unstoppable.

“Stay hydrated. Stay fierce.”

Yun Zhou’s eyes drifted toward it, a half-second, no more. A man in the middle of a threat has no business looking at an advertisement.

But the part of him that never stopped working took the image in anyway and filed it away.

Her face on a screen the size of a building. A smile that expensive doesn’t belong to a person. It belongs to a product.

A face being sold. Interesting.

He looked back at Marlo.

“Hey.” The man with the baton snapped his fingers. “He’s spacing out.”

“Zhou.” Marlo’s voice cooled by ten degrees. “You hearing me?”

“Y-yes, I—”

Crack.

***

The punch came out of nowhere.

Not a slap, not a shove. A closed fist, driven deep into his stomach with the whole weight of Marlo’s body behind it. The air left Yun Zhou’s lungs in a violent rush. His vision flashed white. His knees folded, and he went down on the floorboards hard enough to jar his teeth, one arm wrapped around his middle.

For a moment, there was no sound at all.

Then pain. It rolled through him like a bell, slow and enormous, radiating out from his gut to his spine, his ribs, his skull. The body he’d borrowed screamed in a language of old bruises and fresh ones.

“Ah... ah...” He gasped like a fish on a dock.

“That,” Marlo said, standing over him, “is for making me climb all these stairs.”

He shook out his hand and crouched down so his face was level with Yun Zhou’s.

“And this is a warning. Three days. You hear me? Seventy-two hours. If I don’t see forty-eight million, or at least a solid down payment, you and I are going on a little trip to meet my doctor friend.”

He tapped Yun Zhou’s cheek, almost gently, twice.

“Say it back.”

Yun Zhou pressed his forehead to the floor, shaking. The part of his mind that was still the Heavenly Demon was coldly furious about the indignity. But the part of him that was playing a role, the part that had been playing roles for ninety years, knew the lines.

“Three... days,” he rasped. “I understand.”

“Good boy.”

Marlo stood. The man with the baton snorted and turned toward the door. The thin man stood frozen, looking at Yun Zhou with a kind of horrified pity.

That one’s afraid of Marlo. Afraid of what he’s participating in. Could be useful later.

***

And that was the moment it happened.

Yun Zhou was lying on his side, his cheek against the dirty floor, one hand clutching his stomach. The pain was still rolling through him. His breath was ragged. His vision was blurred with tears that were, this time, not entirely fake.

Then something clicked in his head.

It wasn’t a sound. It was more like a door that had been stuck for a very long time suddenly giving way. A pressure behind his eyes, a coolness, a sudden clarity, as though the room had been underwater and someone had just drained it.

His pupils shrank to pinpricks.

And, faintly, from somewhere that wasn’t his ears, he heard a voice.

...damn, hit him too hard. If he dies before the three days, I’m out the money, and the boss will ask...

Yun Zhou’s breath stopped.

It was Marlo’s voice. But Marlo hadn’t opened his mouth. Marlo was standing six feet away, rubbing his knuckles and looking bored.

...shouldn’t have taken that cut from the weekly collections. Boss is already asking about the shortfall. If he finds out about the ring, the watch...

A thread of warmth ran from Yun Zhou’s nose to his upper lip.

...gotta get this punk to pay up fast. Or at least get something I can hand over as a down payment. Nobody needs to know...

Yun Zhou lay very, very still.

On the floor, hidden behind a curtain of messy black hair and a mask of broken fear, the corner of his left lip rose by a single millimeter.

Oculus.

Whisper.

It was faint. Barely more than a murmur. The range couldn’t have been more than a few feet, and the effort of holding it was already pulling at the edges of his consciousness like a thread being drawn through cloth.

But it was there.

Inside a body he’d been told was defective, broken, a “damaged conduit” with no future, the first, smallest door of his old power had just creaked open.

So you aren’t entirely empty after all.

He tasted blood. A drop landed on the floorboards beside his cheek, bright red against the gray.

Marlo, noticing it, wrinkled his nose.

“Nosebleed? Gross.” He turned away. “Come on. We’re done here.”

The three men filed out through the broken doorway. The thin one lingered half a second longer than the others, glancing back, and Yun Zhou caught a flicker of something in his thoughts: ...I’m sorry, kid...

Then he, too, was gone.

Footsteps clanged down the metal stairs. A car door slammed in the distance. An engine started.

Silence.

***

Yun Zhou stayed on the floor for exactly ten seconds.

Then he sat up, wiped the blood from his lip with the back of his hand, and looked at the red smear on his knuckles with something close to curiosity.

His face was empty. No fear. No pain. No trace of the wet-eyed boy who had been groveling a minute ago. Just a cool, still, perfectly composed expression, the way a surgeon looks at an incision.

He reached into his pocket, found the stub of a pencil, and flipped open the cheap notebook beside the phone. In small, precise handwriting, he wrote:

Marlo Chen.

Weakness: skimming from weekly collections. Fear: his boss.

Evidence: new gold ring, fake watch.

Intent reading range: ~2 meters. Duration: unknown. Cost: nosebleed.

He paused, tapped the pencil against the page, and added one more line.

Three days.

Then he smiled. Not the mask. The real one, thin and small and utterly cold.

“Three days is plenty,” Yun Zhou murmured to the empty room.

Outside the broken door, the giant screen across the street cycled to its next advertisement, and the idol with the caramel hair and the perfect smile vanished from sight.

***

To be continued in Chapter 4: “A Voice in Other People’s Heads”