Stealing the Dragon

Sally wanted to ask a question but was afraid to interrupt.

“But I hurt him first,” said Jun simply.

“How?”

“I took my pink pencil and put it here,” said Jun, raising her small fist to her own throat. “I pushed it in…deep…and I…” her voice trailed off for a moment. “Just kept pushing.”

Sally gasped, her eyes wide.

“Pink was always my favorite color,” said Jun. “But not anymore.”

Sally watched the older girl’s eyes come back into focus.

Jun shrugged. “Anyway, my aunt sent me and my sister here.” She took off the shawl and placed it back on the hook, then turned and walked across the stage. Sally stood alone for a few seconds, trying to grasp what Jun had just told her.

Sally was quiet the rest of the day as they toured the school, but Jun either didn’t mind or didn’t notice, never straying far from her narrative. And true to her word, there were three pools, but they looked more like ponds where you’d find koi fish than places for swimming. They were irregularly shaped and lined with plants and rocks, the largest of them almost twenty meters long and fifteen meters wide.

“They’re connected by tunnels,” said Jun, her voice a conspiratorial whisper. “So we can learn to swim underwater between the pools.”

They passed through a series a connected buildings that Jun called classrooms, but which looked more like playrooms or gymnasiums. In one, a series of ropes hung from the ceiling, and Sally watched as girls of all ages climbed across the rafters like squirrels, then slid down the ropes like two-legged spiders. It looked fun to Sally, not what she thought school would be like.

In another room, girls Jun’s age and slightly older practiced kendo, the Japanese martial art using wooden swords. Sally had been to an exhibition once with her father in Tokyo. The long wooden swords looked awkward in the little girls’ hands, but they handled them gracefully, striking figures made of straw with surprising power.

Every room had at least one teacher, usually a woman but sometimes a man. They walked among the girls, giving instruction and encouragement, their voices low but firm. At other times they stood off to the side, observing as some of the older girls took on the role of instructor. Sally felt their eyes on her at every turn, even as she nodded or returned a smile from one of the other girls.

“The teachers are always watching,” said Jun, as if reading Sally’s mind. “By the end of the first week you’ll feel like a koi fish in a bowl, someone looking no matter where you swim.” She smiled, adding, “But by the second week you won’t even notice.”

The last part of the tour took them to actual classrooms, rows of wooden desks facing an old- fashioned chalkboard. Girls sat dutifully behind the desks, books open, eyes front. Jun led Sally to the doorway, but they stayed outside so as not to disturb the class.

“Language classes,” said Jun.

They had been speaking Cantonese all morning. It never occurred to Sally to try to speak anything else.

“We can learn Japanese, Mandarin, even Russian when we get older,” said Jun. “And English, of course.”

“I speak English,” said Sally proudly, thinking of her father.

Jun smiled mischievously. “Do you know any bad words?”

Sally shook her head.

Jun looked back through the door of the classroom before answering.

“You will.”

Chapter Thirteen

Hong Kong, present day

“The scorpions are quite deadly.”

The Dragon Head stood looking down into the sunken room, a perfect cube twelve feet on a side. It was, in actuality, a room within a room, set in the floor of a much larger loft space like a racquetball court dropped into someone’s living room, the ceiling removed so guests gathered around the square hole in the floor could look down and watch the game. The Dragon Head stood on the lip of the sunken chamber, his black eyes expressionless as he watched the fat man start to sweat.

The fat man’s name was Lim, and if he heard the man standing fifteen feet above him, he was too preoccupied to answer. At the base of the wall on each side of the room was a gap maybe four inches wide, a thin line that looked like a drain. Scorpions were flowing into the room, small and incredibly fast, their legs clicking across the tile floor like castanets.

“A single bite is not typically fatal,” continued the Dragon Head, his voice acquiring the cadence of a school teacher. “But this many, in combination, is sure to do the trick.”

A wave of scorpions washed across the floor, their brown bodies clumping together and forming eddies in the deadly current that threatened to wash over Lim. As he scuttled toward the center of the room like a nervous crab, a heavy rope swung lazily back and forth above him, a promise of rescue just out of reach.

The lecture resumed.

“There are 1,300 species of scorpions worldwide, all easily identified by their elongated bodies, segmented tails, and, of course, stingers.”

Lim shuffled his feet together and jumped, his fingertips brushing the end of the rope and knocking it away. He fell to his knees. A lone scorpion ran up his arm and he screamed, slapping it across the room before it could bite.

“They are technically arthropods of the class Arachnida, related to spiders. You’ll notice they all have eight legs.”

Lim shouted, a frenzied combination of anger and fear, as he hopped and kicked his way around the center of the room. The flow of scorpions through the drain had stopped, the vast army of legs, pincers, and tails seething back and forth less than three feet from where Lim stood. In reality they were as cautious of Lim as he was terrified of them, but in the close confines of the cell they seemed to lean forward, as if sizing up their prey.

Or awaiting instructions.

“Most people think of scorpions as desert creatures,” said the Dragon Head, his voice almost soothing now. “But they have been found in grasslands, savannahs, caves, and even rainforests. Like any strong creature, they adapt to survive.”

This last phrase got Lim’s attention. Reluctantly, he tore his eyes away from the floor and looked up at his captor, his lower lip trembling, his face covered in sweat.

“I told you,” said Lim, gasping. “I haven’t heard anything, I haven’t seen anything. No one has tried to sell it- no one has even heard of it. And if it was being moved in Hong Kong, I would know.”

The Dragon Head frowned, as if he resented having his lecture interrupted.

“That’s why I asked you,” he said simply.

“I can’t help you, lung tau,” cried Lim, tears welling up in his eyes.

“No,” came the reply, the man’s eyes cold and black. “You can’t.” Almost casually, he slid his right foot over a button set in the floor. A barely audible click was followed by a dull roar as the flood of scorpions resumed, the clicking and scraping sounds of the pincers and barbed tails filling the room.

The second wave flowed over the first batch of scorpions, pushing them forward, Lim hopping frantically around the room. He crushed several dozen in the first few minutes, but he was barefoot, and after another halting skip cried out as a four-inch-long tail whipped forward and found its mark.

“The venom is a complex neurotoxin.” The voice from above droned on. “It causes rapid breathing-”

Lim fell to one knee as four scorpions scuttled up his right leg, stabbing as they climbed.

“-followed by shortness of breath-”