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Vincent Lam had won the war against sleep a long time ago. Now he lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling, counting off the hours and the minutes before Mad Max Wong summoned him.<\/p>\n
He got bored at exactly seven minutes past midnight. Time to do something more productive, he decided. He rolled off his bed and clambered to his feet. He didn\u2019t bother switching on the lights. His window faced Building H of the Kowloon Arcology, and greedily drank the spilled golden glow of the unsleeping city within a city.<\/p>\n
He took the eight steps to his fridge and grabbed the first can he found. It was, of course, Tsingtao Liquid Amber. The man he pretended to be favoured that beer. The rationale was simple: Vincent hated it, therefore Bobby Song loved it.<\/p>\n
He popped the tab. Closed his eyes and sucked down a mouthful of mild bitter brew.<\/p>\n
The alcohol had a heartbeat to slosh through his bloodstream. Then his medical implants awoke, diagnosing the poison and releasing neutralising agents. The suite was standard issue for all Hong Kong police officers. The perfect defence against ingested job hazards and off-duty self-medication.<\/p>\n
He gulped down the rest of his beer. Vincent wouldn\u2019t do that, so Bobby would. He had to be Bobby now, not Vincent. Today the machines were merciful, granting him a very slight buzz that lasted for all of a second.<\/p>\n
He dumped the empty can in the recycling bin. He returned to the fridge. Bobby always drank at least two cans of beer. Always. It\u2019s the little things build a cover, and the little things that remind you of it.<\/p>\n
Right. Cover. If he drank enough he might even believe it.<\/p>\n
He grabbed another can of Liquid Amber. Set the beer down on his bedside table, next to his tablet, a grey Aether N8. He walked to the foot of his bed and flipped it up with a clean and jerk. The bed rolled along hidden bearings, sliding up flush against the wall.<\/p>\n
The new wall revealed a folding sofa, held in place by a pair of bolts. He unbolted the sofa, sat down, and sidled up against the table. His hand hovered over the beer, but landed on the Aether.<\/p>\n
One of the perks of undercover life: approved ownership of open-access computers, the real deal from America and Europe. The\u00a0gwailo<\/em>\u00a0had finally rejected the folly that was information access control technology. But the old men in Beijing decreed that Chinese markets and Chinese minds must be protected. Every electronic device that enters the Middle Kingdom must have firmware restrictions, limiting access to Chinese content. Bobby Song was overseeing deals to import American and European open-access information technology on the black market. He would never use anything white market closed-access machines. Commercial Crimes Bureau didn\u2019t like it, but swallowed it as a necessary evil.<\/p>\n Not that Vincent cared. He worked for Organised Crime and Triads, after all.<\/p>\n Bobby Song tapped the home key. The screen sprang to life, demanding the unlock pattern. He slid his finger over the screen, writing a parody of calligraphy. The Aether accepted his offering and jumped to his last open window: Sing Pao Daily Breaking News.<\/p>\n Neither Bobby nor Vincent trusted Sing Pao Daily. It slobbered over Beijing\u2019s pronouncements on the evils of the open-access movement and gloried in Beijing\u2019s maintenance of Great Firewall 3.0. But SPD was the only newspaper covering the one thing Bobby and Vincent was interested in.<\/p>\n \u201cGangsters feud in Kowloon\u201d, the headline said. A twenty-second video clip followed. The thumbnail showed a shophouse burning to the ground, with firemen racing to position their hoses. No fire trucks here. The shophouse was in a cranny on the fifth floor of the urban sprawl politely referred to as the Kowloon Arcology Complex Building C. The floor was someone\u2019s ceiling; it wouldn\u2019t hold the weight of a fire truck and there was no vehicular access anyway.<\/p>\n Vincent skipped the clip, read the text transcript. No update since his last visit. A group of gunmen shot up the shophouse with automatic weapons and threw Molotov cocktails through the windows. The shophouse was owned by Francis Poh, suspected by Commercial Crimes of selling illegal 3D printers and known to have triad links. The gunmen were suspected to be members of a rival triad unhappy with Poh. There was no sign of Poh.<\/p>\n Of course not. Max Wong was meeting Poh when the attack began. Shortly after the hit, Max checked in with the crew. Poh took a bullet, but the men escaped through a secret hatch in the back room. Max brought Poh to a very special clinic, the kind that worked only on underworld denizens and citizens who wanted off-the-books cybernetic surgery.<\/p>\n Vincent had passed the contents of Max\u2019s call to his handler at the Organised Crime and Triad Bureau. Sergeant Eugene Loke acknowledged him with a terse response, and a promise to follow through.<\/p>\n But Max was mad. And when he was maximally mad, madness follows.<\/p>\n With a couple of swipes and presses, Vincent activated his cloak app. It erased his Aether\u2019s online presence in real time, turning it nearly invisible to the all-watching eyes of Cybercrime and white-collar triads. He slipped through the Great Firewall, and entered a covert HKPF online resource site. There he accessed Hong Kong\u2019s surveillance camera network for the fifth time tonight.<\/p>\n The cameras used facial, clothing and gait recognition patterns to identify persons of interest, and their networked intelligence tracked suspects from place to place. But the cameras still could not find Max or Poh. The shooters disappeared shortly after the attack. Vincent wasn\u2019t surprised. No surveillance net is impermeable, and disposable full-face disguises were increasingly common in the underworld.<\/p>\n Presently his cochlear implant vibrated. It fed data to his retinal chip, splicing a photograph into the upper right corner of his sight. Max Wong was calling.<\/p>\n Bobby tapped a very specific spot on his neck twice.<\/p>\n \u201cDailo<\/em>,\u201d he said. Boss. \u201cYou need something?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBobby!\u201d Max said. \u201cCome to the cafe now! I\u2019ve got a surprise for the crew. You\u2019re going to love it!\u201d<\/p>\n Vincent knew that tone too well. Max was too joyful, too energetic. Mad Max had snorted something. He only did that when he had a plan. And wanted blood.<\/p>\n \u201cAll right,\u201d Bobby said. \u201cI\u2019ll be there in twenty.\u201d<\/p>\n Bobby double-tapped the spot again, and the photo vanished. Vincent put the tablet away, and fired up the implant, this time keeping his finger against his skin. A white rolodex of names and images appeared where Max Wong\u2019s face was. He thought Eugene Loke. The rolodex flipped to the name and turned blue. He put his finger away.<\/p>\n Moments later, Loke\u2019s voice entered his ear. \u201cVincent. What do you have for me?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMax is gathering the crew at the cafe,\u201d he said. \u201cHe said he has a surprise for us. I think he\u2019s planning a revenge hit.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOkay. Keep me updated.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s time to roll them up,\u201d Vincent said. \u201cThis is going to get out of hand, and I have all the evidence we need to convict them.\u201d<\/p>\n Loke sighed. \u201cIt\u2019s not my call. Cybercrime and Commercial Crime want a piece of the pie too. I can\u2019t terminate this operation without their approval.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCall them. Burn up their lines. Do whatever it takes. We need to end this tonight, before any more people get killed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou sure about this, Vincent?\u201d Loke asked. \u201cIf it doesn\u2019t\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the only explanation. Look, Mad Max got hit tonight, but when he called me, he sounded over the moon. Only way he\u2019d act like that is if he\u2019s planning something big.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOkay, Vincent, I got it. I\u2019ll talk to the other bureaus. Go to the cafe, gather intel, and keep me in the loop.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGotcha.\u201d<\/p>\n Loke signed off. Vincent stood. He noticed he\u2019d left the beer untouched. He smiled, and raised it in a mock-toast.<\/p>\n \u201cGood luck, Bobby Song,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He returned the beer to the fridge.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Want more long form fiction with science fiction and urban fantasy elements? Check out my latest novel\u00a0HAMMER OF THE WITCHES<\/a>!<\/p>\n![\"Cheah](\"https:\/\/steemitimages.com\/0x0\/https:\/\/files.steempeak.com\/file\/steempeak\/cheah\/DPghjj4k-Cheah20Git20San20Red.jpg\")
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