Should the Arrow Fly Further, pt 6

by natprance

Xiu Zhang squatted next to the garbage cans in the alley and pulled her hood up over her head. She ran her fingers along the old flintlock pistol in her coat pocket. The woodgrain on the grip was rough and chipping away. Lifting it gently and weighing it in her hand, she ran her palm over the butt of the handle. It was a smooth, soft brass, dented and bruised from being used as a club. The orange-red cherry from Xiu’s cigarette sent up wisps of smoke that twirled effortlessly through the pouring rain. She focused on the smell of nicotine, the delicate claws of smoke that painlessly scratched her lungs with each deep inhalation. She sat motionlessly and watched the door of the garage.

As she extinguished and lit her fifth and sixth cigarettes, she heard a latch unlocking from the inside of the shop. The door was lifted open, and the man inside crouched under it before fumbling for his keys in his dark blue sweat shirt. Xiu stood up and walked swiftly over to him as he bent over to lock the door.

“Where is Prometheus?” she asked in a chilly monotone.

The man gasped and turned to her with his eyes wide in fear.

“Who the fuck are you? Where did you come from?”

Xiu punched him hard in the chest and he fell backwards. She crouched and looked directly into his eyes. She activated all of the implants in her head, and her irises glowed menacing neon green. She heard the whirring of the gears next to her eyes, and she knew he did too.

“Gibson Ellison. You know where Prometheus is. You worked for him. You still work for him. Where is he?”

Ellison looked around nervously and squirmed backward until his back was against the garage door.

“L-listen, lady,” he stammered, “I know you must want this Prometheus guy really bad, but I don’t know who that is, I’m just a guy who…”

He trailed off as she stood up and pulled the pistol from her coat pocket. She examined it, balanced it in her hand, twirled the weighty object effortlessly in her fingers. She crouched next to him and smiled cruelly.

“Gibson Ellison,” she repeated, “You know where Prometheus is. I’m sure of that. Do you know what this is?”

Ellison eyed the weapon cautiously, unsure of what she wanted him to say.

“I-it’s an old pistol. Please, please, I have a family,” he begged.

Xiu stood again, flipping the gun in the air and catching it by the barrel.

“Don’t worry,” she said calmly, “I’m not going to shoot you.”

Midway through his sigh of relief, Gibson Ellison felt a searing pain crashing into the side of his kneecap. Screaming and howling, he grabbed at his limb, as though trying to squeeze the sensation out of his leg. Xiu paced back and forth calmly.

“I’m going to hurt you very, very, very badly. I am going to make you suffer. I am going to make you wish you had answered the question when I first asked it. Where is Prometheus?”

Choking on his tears, Ellison looked up at the terrifying silhouette that stood in front of him. Without taking her burning green eyes off of him, she lit a cigarette that hung limply in her mouth.

“Please, please,” he begged, holding his hand in front of her, “I just worked for him, if I tell you where he is, he’ll…”

Ellison slumped to the wet concrete, sobbing.

“You know my name,” he said through his wet cries, “What else do you know?”

Xiu brought up the file she had saved on her hard drive and read from it mechanically.

“Gibson Ellison. You were arrested in 2034 for armed robbery, released in 2038 for good behaviour. You were placed in a rehabilitation program for which you failed to report to in 2039. Since then, you have been living under aliases and performing small crimes and smuggling deals for various criminal organisations. Most recently, you have been delivering and receiving unmarked goods for an unknown benefactor, alongside two other small-time criminals, Alexei Ivanovich Liebemann and Johann Alan. Comparing Liebemann and Alan’s activities in the past year and a half to their activities beforehand, it becomes obvious that the three of you were working under a single entity who was orchestrating all of your meet-ups. Prometheus.”

Xiu looked at Ellison through her display.

“Is there anything else I should know?” she added.

Ellison looked at her before dropping his eyes to the ground. “Does it say anything about my son?”

Xiu read through the file again, then once more before looking at the man. He held his head in his hands and was crying softly.

“No, it doesn’t,” Xiu said.

Putting the gun back in her pocket, she crouched down next to Ellison and turned off all her implants. She extended a cigarette to him, which he placed in his mouth with a shaky hand.

“I have a son,” Ellison began, “He’s a good kid. Had him after I got out. Tried to move away from crime, into a family. His name’s Ray. I love him. But he’s, ah… He’s hard to manage. He’s got health issues. Makes him sad or angry or too happy. Never thought that was a thing. ‘Too happy.’ Sounds weird saying it.”

“Get to the point, Ellison.”

“Right, right, sorry. So it makes him kinda crazy. Not much you can do about that. Pills help a bit, but pills are expensive and he doesn’t always take them. Hides them under his tongue. Pukes them back up. Usually he’s real good, but sometimes when he’s mad or feeling too good, he doesn’t like the pills. Things are getting hard to control, he won’t go to school, he’s hurting people, he’s… He’s talking about hurting himself. Killing himself. We’re scared, we don’t know what to do. We’re so tired from taking care of him, and we can’t afford his meds, and… Then I get this letter. An old-fashioned letter in the mail. Never seen one that wasn’t junk. Says that if I do a few things, they’ll get a neuro-inhibitor implanted in the kid. Regulates his chemicals, makes more if there aren’t enough, gets rid of some if there are too many… I dunno how it all works, but it works. Haven’t seen him like that in years. He’s happy, but not too happy. He gets frustrated, but he takes a deep breath and calms down. He’s in control of his feelings, and we can see the boy we raised. The kid we love.”

Xiu leaned over and gave him another cigarette, which he gladly accepted. As the lighter illuminated his face, Xiu looked at his soft, heavy-lidded eyes and realized that she didn’t feel pity or rage towards this man anymore. She felt sympathy. Ellison took a deep breath and continued.

“So I get a call. Guy on the other end asks ‘How do you like the new implant?’ I tell him that I love it, it’s great, can’t thank him enough. And he says…”

Ellison took a deep haul from his cigarette. His hands began to shake again, and as he placed the cigarette back in his mouth, the cherry lit up his face with a violent, strobing red-orange.

“He says it’s a bomb. He says I work for him now. And if I refuse to co-operate, he kills my son. So now I do this. Or my son dies. So, I’m sorry lady, but I can’t tell you where he is, or he’ll kill my son. You can kill me, or torture me, whatever. I’m just telling you right now that you won’t get anything out of me.”

Xiu stood up and extended the man her hand. He reached up and she lifted him to his feet, wincing slightly as he put weight on his bruised knee. Looking at him from under her furrowed brow, she exhaled in defeat.

“I understand,” she said, “Go. I won’t put your son in harm’s way for my own sake. I promise.”

Ellison’s lip shook and he nodded quickly before limping out of the alley and into the brightly illuminated main street. Xiu watched him turn the corner before bringing up her ocular display. Flipping through the pages to her map of Hong Kong, she watched a little dot marked ‘G.E.’ get into a cab and head home for the night.

She ran her fingers through her hair as she walked past cheap dim sum stands and cellphone vendors who hawked stolen goods. She felt bad for having tricked Ellison, but she understood that he would have never talked. He wasn’t tough like her, or mean like her, or intimidating like her. But he loved like her. She knew that he would never have talked because she would never have talked.

She stepped into her apartment and ordered herself a cup of filthy black sludge. Sitting down on the bed, she massaged her temples. Bringing up her map again, she watched the little G.E. dot come to a stop in a little apartment complex. She imagined him getting in bed next to his wife, who slept peacefully. In the other room of the apartment was his son, who slept peacefully as well. And she imagined that little dot tossing and turning, terrified that any moment, he would lose it all.

She knew how close she was to Prometheus. She knew how close she was to saving her sister. But she would wait for Gibson Ellison’s sake, and for his wife’s sake, and for his son’s sake. She would make sure that he had no knowledge of the tiny tracking devices he had inhaled when he smoked those cigarettes she had given him. She would follow his movements carefully for a week, taking care to note every stop he made that seemed strange or out of the way of his daily routine. And when she found which stop hid Prometheus from her, she would strike hard and fast and deadly. She would be a snake darting down a rodent’s burrow. When she was done, Gibson Ellison would sleep peacefully alongside his family.