The Refugee Sentinel (22 page)

Li-Mei tilted the alarm clock to see the time better. The morning flooded her room with messy light, reflecting off the puddles yesterday’s downpour had left outside. Her head hummed with the remote murmur that would blossom, nine times out of ten, into a pounding headache. Through the night she had checked the time every few minutes. It was six-am at last and she had pushed through.

A notice had appeared under the door last night. At first, she refused to believe it. What hadn’t she done? For all she knew, the Purple Servant was still hanging in the square: the end to all tests and all battles. She was supposed to report back the following morning with packed bags. But last night, as she was heading for the shower – she had never killed a person before and her body hurt to the bone – she saw the paper slip.

She took her time turning around and covering the distance between the bathroom’s tiled floor and the front door. It made no sense to rush. No matter how fast she opened the door, the carrier of slips always disappeared without a trace. In the beginning, she would check behind corners, run around the building and waited for him by the door, but had never caught a glimpse. For a short while, she thought the slips were a game of hide-and-seek. It wasn’t a game. Some slips were explicit: “Battle against seven Servants at nine-am tomorrow in the square.” She’d show up and they would beat her teeth in, then she’d crawl home, hoping the next slip would wait until she had the chance to heal some. As she grew stronger and refined her combat style, the losing slowed and stopped altogether. Consequent groups of Servants would find themselves knocked out with concussions and sprains. On principle, she stayed away from spilling blood or breaking limbs. Sometimes, she would defy the slips and skip the encounter to test the system but without exception, her opponents would find her, always more numerous and always carrying weapons. So it paid to do as she was told.

But the slips weren’t always appointments. Sometimes they would lecture her: “Be true to your courage,” or “Remain vigilant and pure.” Nothing happened on days following such brainteasers… with two big exceptions. Two slips announcing: “Prepare for tomorrow’s reckoning,” had preceded both encounters with the Purple Servant. Last night’s slip read “Save Taxi.”

Under the hot shower she hoped it was a lecture slip… it had to be. Throughout the years, the Jenli system of drills and classes and slips had been blind to Taxi’s existence… until last night. She considered locking him in her room, checking out alone and coming back for him before leaving. But how could she, after this slip? She’d never let anything bad happen to him. “You’re coming with me,” she said and opened the door. Enticed, he bolted out. Jenli’s summer mornings were hard to beat.

Li-Mei locked her room one last time and turned around. The world was wet and shiny from yesterday’s rain, with the morning sun ricocheting from the pavement and the grass. By sheer solidarity, such days were meant to keep harm at bay. Or was it a decoy? She held the door handle to steady herself.

Taxi was hard to find because of the glare but she heard him shuffling ahead through the grass. His barometer would sense danger long before she could, so his enthusiasm helped ease her nerves. Maybe the paranoia was in her head? She doubted it, but who was she to question hope.

She headed for the square, the destination of whatever was in store. Taxi, still giddy with the morning, paused at every puddle and shiny smell along the way. She inhaled the wet air and the wind filled her nostrils with pinpricks. She was thankful to be alive. A glorious feeling that didn’t discriminate between a gifted athlete or a legless cripple. Or a thirteen-year-old girl and her dog, excited to start the rest of their lives. Then the wind threw in her face the scent of sweat and leather. She saw them surrounding the square from all sides, in no apparent hurry. They wore purple overcoats, as if paying homage to their comrade she had killed. Li-Mei hadn’t seen these men in Jenli – dark men with the rugged skin that only the sun of open horizons could forge. They formed three lines around her. She counted fifty of them.

“This village is Jenli,” she said. “You may stay if you come in peace.”

One of them stepped forward. “We come in peace to everyone but you, Li-Mei Gao.”

Taxi arrived by her side, his rapture with the beautiful morning forgotten. “You’ve come here in error,” she said. “The Purple Servant was the final test.”

Without a reply, ten of the men attacked. The others fell back, in the absurd scenario that she survived the initial assault. With an elbow sweep, Li-Mei broke the nose of a six-foot tall Mongol whose face was covered with tattoos. Then, with a sidekick, she crushed the jugular of a turban-wearing mulatto. The other eight attackers flanked her, pummeling her feet with long bamboo sticks. She evaded the first dozen hits with high jumps but as they kept coming, both the hits and the men, she fell down, her heels littered with cuts. The rest was a travesty. Four men, each holding an arm or a leg, pinned her to the ground. The end. Her earlier pledges of unending resistance seemed like a lifetime ago. So be it. She owed it to herself to regroup and collect her wits. She sought Taxi with her eyes. He was dazed, too, entangled in mesh and trying to chew his way to freedom. The heavy rope damaged his gums more than his teeth damaged the rope, but he pressed on, and would have broken free if the men had left him unattended. Their intentions were different. One of them threw him in a sack and tied it to the branch where the Purple Servant had hung the previous day.

Li-Mei looked at the sun, so inviting before, yet unwarming now. Two birds chasing each other scuffled in the air above and danced on, discussing something important. Her ribcage rang with pain. Someone had just stabbed her right side, above the kidney. “Are you prepared to die?” said the man who had addressed her before. A blade, dripping with her blood, hovered an inch from her chin.

“You don’t scare me.” She thumped the ground with a fist in the most movement afforded by the men holding her down. This new Purple Servant – she realized there would always be a new one, no matter how many she killed – leaned over her head. A mask hid his nose and mouth. His eyebrows formed furry upside-down grins and the mask over his month puffed and fell with each breath. She cracked a thin smile. If this was the view that preceded death then the act itself couldn’t be that bad.

“This is the sword that will take your life,” he said, “a weapon superior to your entire being.” The blade swung above her face. “Observe its unremarkable steel.” His eyes moved from her to the sword, and back. “All your hopes, all the roads you’ve taken, will end with this blade. You’ve marched toward its steel since the day you were born. Take a moment and welcome it.”

Li-Mei sensed the sword split her stomach apart, the shearing of muscles and nerves. White snowflakes exploded above her eyes but didn’t fall because it wasn’t snowing. Blood gathered, hot and sticky, in her belly button then spilled over her sides. She closed her eyes. Keeping them open was useless because the snowflakes had blanketed her vision white. In a way, this new Purple Servant was right: she was thankful to know the blade that would kill her. Humans were hard to kill – their deaths took time. It was right they understood what was going on. The searing pain burned on as the blade sunk deeper in her stomach, pausing its slow descent once and again then resuming.

The voice of the new Purple Servant came in waves. “Welcome it and claim your place among the souls who fell to this steel. Unless…” he paused and she knew she didn’t want to hear him again. She didn’t want to hear anything. Please, push the blade in and cut the theatrics, she thought, but he continued. “Unless you think I should give you a chance.”

Her eyelids rose halfway. The sky seemed brighter and with a resolution several times sharper than what she remembered. “Take your chance and shove it…” she wanted to say. Instead of words, blood trickled out of her mouth.

“I know.” His voice sounded like the voice of a smiling man but the eyes above the mask remained cold. “Isn’t hope wonderful? We can’t quit it, even if it quits us. Even with a sword stuck in our gut, we cling to it. I’ll give you one chance to live.”

Someone thrust a kinjal in her hand and the man who sat on that arm pressed her fist against the ground with doubled strength.

For a moment, Li-Mei considered fighting through the fifty men, but dismissed the thought. Instead, her head fell to one side. A sack sat a foot away from her face. A Servant cracked it open and inside she saw Taxi, his front legs tied together. He lay on his side too and his eyes blinked to adjust to the bleached morning. Then he saw her and barked once, with unmissable joy. His voice filled the air and made everything OK for a moment like back when they were kids.

The new Purple Servant crouched between her and the dog. “How does it feel to have a second shot at life?” he said. “Wait… Don’t answer or I might reconsider. The sword that’s tearing your abdomen is in my hand, but the knife that could save your life is in yours.”

Taxi had drawn closer, his hind legs paddling inside the bag. She raised her neck to see him better - the tarp over his torso lay flat. He had covered about a foot, leaving a bloody trail in his wake, bright against the gray square pavement. She closed her eyes and when they opened, Li-Mei was crying for the first time in her life. Her neck swung around looking for the new Purple Servant and her hand squeezed the kinjal until her fingernails bled. “What did you do to him? I’ll kill you and everyone else you brought along; one by one. I promise.”

“Honesty is the purest gift I have for you,” he said. “Maybe the second purest after death. Your abdomen is pouring blood. And at this rate, you’ll die in minutes.” Then he looked at the Shiba and shook his head with concern that almost seemed genuine. “Poor Taxi – broken pelvis and a cut-off tail. I guarantee he won’t survive the blood loss.” The new Purple Servant leaned and caressed her hair. She pulled away from his hand. “Your dog is gone, but if you kill him before he dies, I’ll spare your life. Look at my men, if it helps you, study their faces and, years from now, come after us to claim revenge. Or leave them out of it and come after me. Break my pelvis to get even and watch me bleed to death. But first, you’ll have to kill your dog to save him from his pain.”

Li-Mei’s tears spilled down the sides of her head. She turned away from the Servant and looked at the sky. Taxi’s nose had almost reached the fingers of her hand. She screamed at the clouds and wished for death. She strained, as if giving birth and emptied every breath from her lungs then raised her stomach against the blade, begging the steel to sink deeper. Another inch should be enough. More men fell upon her, pushing her torso to the ground.

She inhaled through clenched teeth then sobs ruptured her breathing into hiccups. She felt like a rebellious mare who had run to the ends of the earth, only to find out that the saddle remained on her back. The sensation of defeat poured into her chest with pain that made her minced abdomen feel like a paper cut in comparison.

She had fought against Jenli and landed her punches as hard as she could for longer than she could remember. But Jenli had come back stronger after each blow she gave it. She was done... Jenli wanted her with a bond she couldn’t break. In return, the least she could do was be its loyal daughter.

Her brain registered Taxi’s tongue licking her fingers. He had reached her palm, at last. How long ago, she couldn’t be certain. She squeezed the kinjal and lifted her hand and sunk the blade in Taxi’s neck. He didn’t have time to react. His tongue licked her fingers one more time, in a mechanic sequence that took his brain a second longer to process. His eyes stayed fixed on her face.

The Servants loosened their grip, the blade exited her stomach and pungent oils took its place. The last thing Li-Mei saw before the blood loss extinguished her consciousness was Taxi’s eyes. They had on them his last sentiment before death took his soul from his body: his eyes were full of love for her.

Sylvya had almost found him and it was time to tune in to the Get-a-Grip channel. She counted to a long thirty. On the job, she had seen how doctors who panicked in the face of urgency lost every time. She breathed in and out through her nose, closed her eyes and as much as she itched to rush into whatever came next, forced another thirty out of her.

The first item on the agenda had to be to find her bearings. She opened her eyes and located the Jetta, a folded green accordion in the distance, then looked around. She had to be in Seattle’s SoDo district somewhere - at a higher elevation than the flood line. Sylvya catalogued the string of buildings up and down the street to decide which one would make a good holding cell for a felon. She had no clue. Nursing school hadn’t taught her how to deal with cops and Special Ops teams, unless they were bed-ridden and in a coma.

Across the prowler, a two-floor structure with its front door cracked open, beckoned her to take a peek. Her hands hugged her sides and she took two steps forward and shivered in the night breeze. What if someone stood on guard behind that door? Could she take them on? She became aware of how unfit she was for a physical confrontation in her scrubs. She had to go for stealth over brute force, which meant getting in through a side entry.

Sylvya walked around to the back of the building where the shadows were darker and undisturbed by the blinking orange from the street side. She stretched a hand and rested her fingertips on the porous back wall then walked in a straight line. Her hand traced the wall, until bouncing against something wet and metallic: an evacuation ladder. She looked up, but the black sky hid from her how high the ladder rose. It didn’t really matter. She grabbed the steel with both hands and climbed, placing a foot on each rung then bringing her other foot level. As she went up, she examined the surrounding wall and came across what felt like a window. Sylvya flicked the glass with a finger to check for cracks; it was solid and large enough for her to squeeze through, but after several minutes she hadn’t figured out how to get it open.

She climbed two more rungs and, with a swing of her right foot, kicked through the glass. The window broke with a noise that, to her, sounded as deafening as a fire alarm. She waited for a reaction from inside but other than warm air billowing from the broken opening, the black silence continued to hold the world like a cocoon. Sylvya pried the frame clean of loose shards, which she placed in the side pockets of her nurse gown – she’d rather swallow the glass than make more noise by throwing the pieces away – then poked her head through the frame and heard muffled voices from the inside.

She swung her right leg over the windowsill and inside. Smaller leftover shards bit into her thigh as she shifted weight and straddled the sill. She inhaled and lurched forward, hoping the glass wouldn’t cut too deep. She touched a ledge on the other side and padded around on what felt like a metallic plate. She tumbled over the windowsill and the plate accepted her full weight without a creak. An orb of feeble light coming from below grabbed her attention. She peeked over the ledge and pressed her palms against her face to suppress a scream. Colton sat in a chair. Alive. The cop sat next to him and a woman paced about in a way that left no confusion she was in charge.

Lying as low as she could manage, Sylvya shrunk behind the metal ledge. None of the three people below seemed aware of her presence. Colton and the woman were talking, and the policeman was listening. The words “quantity of life” and “fast death” reached Sylvya. A loud crack, something wooden against something concrete, shot up and she heard the woman’s metal falsetto: “You have ten seconds. Unless the next words out of your mouth give me a preference…” She had heard enough. Colton was right – she had delivered him to people bent on taking his life, unless she could do something to stop them.

Sylvya patted over the Ketamine syringes nestled in the front pocket of her scrubs. There were four of them. She took a syringe in each hand and pushed their plungers until two wisps of liquid shot into the air. Cocked and ready. She crept along the metal ledge, stopping above a large insulation clump next to the three people below. The woman was dragging Colton by the leg and the cop was sitting sideways. He turned and saw Sylvya, his mouth forming a circle. It was time.

Sylvya jumped with a syringe in each hand, like a surgeon entering a life-saving procedure. She landed hard, the insulation underneath her too shallow to cushion the fall. Pain inside her right leg bleached the surroundings for a moment and her body rolled over the floor, grinding one of the syringes in her hands and the two in her pocket into glass and tranquilizer fluid. Sylvya stood up, reeling with the pain in her leg and hobbled forward. A few yards separated her from the cop, the woman, and the love of her life, who she would never let go again. The woman turned, bewilderment painted on her face. The cop, a polar opposite, observed the attack frozen in his chair. Sylvya got to him first, the flesh of his neck gobbling the needle of her only remaining syringe. She pushed the plunger, screaming like a gladiator who had felled an enemy to gain her life, then pulled the spent syringe, its needle dripping cop blood, and turned to the woman.

Sylvya tomahawked her hand forward, gripping the syringe with a full fist. The Asian parried the attack then grabbed Sylvya’s hand and broke it at the wrist. She kicked Sylvya’s doubled-over body until the nurse stopped moving.