The key weighed exactly 8.3 grams. Manning knew this, having weighed the key on the electronic kitchen scale while Mrs. Liu turned her back, pretending to admire the espresso machine. Eight-point-three grams of brass, nickel-plated, cut by CNC machine sometime in the late nineties. The bow was stamped with a tiny phoenix-same symbol that glowered on her coffered ceiling in her bedroom. A family crest-or a brand mark; she could not decide which sounded more distasteful.
Now, 10:17 AM, she climbed the main staircase, the key sweating in her left palm. Her right wrist throbbed inside the splint-Dr. Chen had prescribed codeine that she had not taken. She needed her pain to stay alert.
The third floor was as silent as a cathedral. No footmen, no buzzing vacuum cleaners, no sound except that of money so ancient that it learned to breathe without making a sound. Her sneakers-new, white, still smelling of the box-felt muted on the ivory Persian runner. All the family photographs had been taken off the wall. The nails remained-little brass mouths-glittering in the damask fabric as if the portraits had been snatched away hurriedly.
At the end of the hall stood a single door slightly ajar.
Not locked.
Manning stopped two paces short. Cedarwood and something metallic-similar to coins warmed in a pocket-smelled through the gap. The pulse thump along her wrist fracture. She pushed.
The study was a capsule of time. Sunlight slanted through half-closed shutters, illuminating a desk the size of a small aircraft carrier. Green leather top, scarred with ink rings and cigarette burns. On it were a banker's lamp, a Rolodex, a rotary phone in bone-white Bakelite. Shelves soared behind the desk to the ceiling, stacked with ledgers bound in burgundy leather, goals flaking away like dandruff. Not a computer, not a monitor, not a thing in the way of gadgets that required power except the lamp.
Stepping in, she felt there was an air of abandonment and incompletion. On the far wall hung a lone framed photograph: two men in their thirties with arms slung over each other's shoulders. One was definitely Xu Xiao's father-same predatory cheekbones, same glacial eyes. The other man...Manning's breath stuttered. The same face she had been staring at in the scratched-out locket, only younger, unblemished, smiling as if the world had not yet taught him betrayal.
Shen Tian.
Father.
She stepped closer. The glass was cracked in a diagonal-a hairline fracture that bisected Shen Tian's smile. Someone drew a gold fountain pen against one corner of the frame, ink long dried, now rusty. She lifted it. The engraving along the barrel read: To X.W.-For the day we own the sky.-S.T.
X.W. Xu Wen, the father of Xu Xiao.
The day we own the sky.
Manning's fingers closed about the pen until the chasing bit into her skin. An almost inaudible low mechanical hum became evident. She turned. Behind the desk, a brass floor safe stood open. It had not been pried upon, nor had it been forced-open it simply yawned, almost like an answer waiting for confession. Inside was one manila folder and a cigarette pack-sized device that had its LED blinking red.
She pulled the folder first. Heavy paper, really yellowed. Typed label: PROJECT PHOENIX-PHASE ZERO. CONFIDENTIAL. She opened it.
Photostats of shipping manifests. Chemical patents. A list of names-some crossed out in red, and others annotated in dates and amounts. Down the list, halfway down, was her mother's name: Luo Wan-Subject M. Next to it, a note in blue ink: Compromised. Relocation advised
Her stomach twisted. Flipping to another page, she froze. A grainy ultrasound image, dated nineteen years ago. Labelled fetus S.M.-viability 97%. Her own prenatal scan.
She dropped the folder.
The cigarette-pack device had stopped blinking. Now it glowed a steady red. A voice, Xu Xiao's, crackled from some hidden speaker, calm and intimate as though he were standing behind her.
"Welcome to my father's sins, Shen Manning. Count to ten before you touch anything else."
She swirled. No speaker visible. The voice continued.
"One. Two-"
She grabbed the device. It was warm. A tiny LCD screen scrolled text: Biometric trigger active. Retinal scan mismatch. Explosive charge armed.
"Nine-"
She threw it into the safe and slammed the door. The click was shockingly soft. A brief moment of pause, and then coming from inside the steel was a muffled thud, like a fist punching a pillow. Smoke leaked through the seams: sharp and acrid. When she pried the door open again, the folder and device formed a crumpled black mess. Whatever evidence they had held was now ash.
Footfalls sped down the corridor. Purposeful. Xu Xiao stood in the threshold, now breathing hard with his tie awry. He surveyed her paste-white face, the smoking safe, the cracked photograph.
"You armed it." No accusation; the words were a weary acknowledgment.
"It was armed already." She could hear the tremor in her voice and hated it. "Why keep a bomb in your father's desk?"
"My father did not trust anyone, not even the air." He crossed to the safe, examining the charred remains of which seemed to him quite detached and dispassionately perceived by one trained keenly. "Did you find what you wanted?"
"Did your mother subject to the subject?" The word so pronounced had a very foul taste.
"I suspected." He lifted the cracked photograph from the wall. The fracture now ran straight across Shen Tian's heart, "Your father and mine built something that could not be controlled. When it devoured them both, they locked it up. The bomb was insurance."
"What something?"
He met her eyes. "Phoenix. An algorithm that could predict-and then manipulate-global resource markets. Lithium, cobalt, water. They fed it data until it became a god. Then it demanded sacrifices."
Manning thought of the ultrasound, terrorist attacks and her mother's name on the list. "Sacrifices like my mother's sanity?"
"And my father's life." He set the photograph down glass crunching. "On the night when your parents' car exploded, Phoenix went dark. Your father took the core code with him. We assumed too, that it died with him."
"But you think it didn't."
"I think you're wearing the key around your neck."
Manning's hand sprang to the chain hidden under her sweater. The locket. She had not noticed before: the clasp was not a clasp at all, but a miniature USB port, copper plated. Xu Xiao extended his hand.
She hesitated. "If I give this to you, what happens?"
"We finish what they started. Or we bury it forever. Your choice."
Downstairs rang a phone--shrill, urgent. Mrs. Liu's voice echoed up the stairwell: "Mr. Xu! Security breach at the front gate!"
Xu Xiao's expression turned hard. He took the locket gently, fingers brushing her pulse. "Too late. They've found us."
Through the window, Manning saw them: three black SUVs skidding to a halt, doors opening like wings. Men in dark coats, one carrying a bolt cutter that flashed silver in the sun.
Xu Xiao closed the study door, turned the lock. The click sounded final. "Stay close," he said. "And whatever happens, don't look back."
Manning felt the fracture in her wrist pulse in time with her heart. The room that was now a tomb was a bunker. Outside, footsteps stormed the marble. Within, the only thing left burning was the photograph of two young men who once thought sky ownership could be theirs.
She reached for Xu Xiao's sleeve. "If we survive this," she whispered, "I want the truth about my mother."
He looked down at her hand-small, splinted, trembling-then at the door that wouldn't hold long.
"You'll get it," he said. "But it won't cost you more than that wrist."
The first blow landed on the door-metal on wood splinters flying. Manning tasted smoke and cedar and the metallic edge of what came next. She stepped behind him, close enough to feel the heat radiating from his skin.
The frame of the door splintered. Sunlight and shadow poured in together.