The next day passed with a strange, suspended quality, each hour stretching like taffy, sticky and slow. The familiar sounds of Mong Kok—the blaring horns, the hawkers' cries, the constant hum of a million lives colliding—felt muffled, as if Kai were hearing them from the bottom of a well. A low-grade hum of anxiety vibrated in his bones, a constant reminder of the ticking clock. Tonight was the night of the fabricated shipment. Tonight, his lie would be put to the test, and the verdict would be delivered not in a courtroom, but in the silent, digital pulse of a burner phone.
He and Lok spent the day on minor tasks for Sai Lo—collecting the weekly protection payments from the myriad market stalls that clung to the underbelly of Mong Kok like barnacles. It was mundane, almost boring work, a stark contrast to the life-and-death stakes simmering beneath Kai's calm exterior. He moved through the crowded, pungent aisles of the wet market like an automaton, his hands mechanically accepting envelopes of cash, his mind a thousand miles away on a dark cove and a trawler heading towards a rendezvous that existed only in his imagination and, terrifyingly, now in Mister Wong's ledgers.
Lok, despite his bruises, was in a better mood. The small, tangible amounts of cash they collected felt like validation, and the stall owners' fearful deference was a balm to his wounded pride. He talked, laughed, and even joked with a few of the more familiar vendors, a performance of normalcy and belonging that he was fully inhabiting. Kai watched him, this earnest performance, and felt a profound, isolating loneliness. He was an actor on a stage where the stakes were mortal, and Lok was the only person in the audience who thought the play was real, who cheered for the hero without knowing the script was written in blood.
As evening bled into night, painting the sky in shades of bruised purple and neon orange, the anxiety tightened its grip, a vise around his lungs. He found excuses to stay out, to keep moving. He couldn't sit still in the claustrophobic apartment, a cage where his own thoughts would devour him. He told Lok he was scouting for 18K activity near the Temple Street Night Market, a pretext his friend accepted with an eager nod, thrilled by the prospect of more action.
Kai walked. He walked until the soles of his feet burned and the dazzling, chaotic lights of the market blurred into a single, glowing river of chaos. He checked his cheap, untraceable phone every few minutes, his thumb hovering over the button to illuminate the blank screen. He half-expected a message from Wong summoning him for a final, brutal accounting, or worse—a message from an unknown number with a single, triumphant word: Success.
Neither came. The silence was its own form of exquisite torture.
He ended up on the rooftop of their tong lau, a bleak, concrete space strung with ghostly laundry lines and littered with the skeletal remains of discarded furniture. The vast, sprawling city stretched before him to the horizon, a breathtaking tapestry of impossible light and profound shadow. Somewhere out there, in the dark, choppy waters between Lantau and Zhuhai, a fisherman named Chan was either steering his boat towards an empty, terrifying patch of ocean, or he was being intercepted by a very real Wo Shing shipment that Wong had, impossibly, materialized from the ether of Kai's lie. The variables were endless, a hydra of potential disasters, and every one of them led back to his own demise.
The roof door creaked open on rusted hinges. Lok emerged, holding two bottles of Tsingtao beer, the glass slick with condensation. He wordlessly handed one to Kai and leaned against the grimy ledge beside him, their shoulders almost touching.
"Couldn't sleep either?" Lok asked, taking a long, grateful swallow.
"Something like that," Kai murmured, the cold bottle a welcome, solid anchor in his trembling hand.
They stood in a companionable silence for a while, the distant, electric hum of the city a constant backdrop to their thoughts.
"You know," Lok said, his voice quieter now, stripped of its usual bravado. "After you left… after you got out… things were hard. I got into some bad deals. Owed money to some very bad people. It was Sai Lo who stepped in. He cleared my debt. Said I had potential." He took another drink, the liquid catching the distant neon glow. "This life… it's not all bad, Kai. It's about brotherhood. It's about having people who have your back, no matter what."
Kai said nothing. Lok's words were a heartfelt confession, a key offered to a lock he thought they shared. But to Kai, they were a horror story. It was the exact same recruitment tactic the force used—offering salvation to create unbreakable obligation. Lok was sincerely, tragically, telling him how grateful he was to his captors.
"Just be sure you know who really has your back, Lok," Kai said finally, the words slipping out before he could stop them, a fragment of his own conscience breaking the surface.
Lok looked at him, confused, his brow furrowing. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Before Kai could formulate a response, a sound cut through the night—not from his phone, but from the street below. A sharp, metallic scrape, followed by the low rumble of a van door sliding shut. Too late for deliveries. Too deliberate.
Kai's police instincts screamed. He grabbed Lok's arm. "Get down."
He yanked them both behind a large, rusted air conditioning unit just as the rooftop door burst open with a splintering crash. Not one or two, but four men poured onto the roof, their movements fluid and coordinated. They were not 18K brawlers; they moved with a disciplined, predatory grace Kai recognized from his own training. Professional muscle. They carried no guns, only the glint of telescopic steel batons in their hands. This was to be a quiet, close-quarters message.
"Jin Kai!" the lead man called, his voice a flat, emotionless tone. "Mad Dog Kwok sends his regards. He doesn't like dog catchers."
Lok stared, wide-eyed with terror, his beer bottle rolling away, its contents glugging onto the concrete. "Kai…"
"Stay behind me," Kai whispered, his mind instantly clear, the world sharpening into a series of targets and trajectories. The anxiety was gone, replaced by a cold, focused calm. The roof was his arena. The laundry lines were tripwires. The discarded furniture was cover.
The first two fanned out, batons extended. They came in fast, one high, one low. Kai didn't retreat. He exploded forward, meeting their advance. As the first baton whistled towards his skull, he dropped into a low sweep, his leg scything the attacker's feet from under him. The man crashed down hard, his head cracking against the concrete. Simultaneously, Kai used his downward momentum to spring up, driving his shoulder into the second man's chest, deflecting the baton strike. He grabbed the man's weapon arm, pivoted, and used the man's own force to send him cartwheeling over his back into a tangled heap of laundry lines.
The third man was already on him, baton striking like a cobra. Crack! Kai took the blow on his forearms, the pain blinding but familiar. He absorbed it, let the shock travel through his body, and didn't give an inch. Before the man could retract his arm, Kai trapped it, locking the elbow. He saw the man's eyes widen in shock an instant before Kai drove a savage palm-heel strike up under his chin. There was a sickening click. The man dropped, limp.
The leader, the one who had spoken, hung back, assessing. He was bigger, calmer. He saw the wreckage of his team and knew he was facing something different. He threw aside his baton and pulled a butterfly knife from his pocket. The blade snicked open, gleaming under the city's glow.
"They said you were good," the man growled, circling. "Let's see."
He lunged, the knife a silver blur aimed at Kai's throat. Kai sidestepped, the blade whispering past his jaw. He grabbed the man's wrist, but the leader was strong, reversing the grip and slashing downwards. Kai was forced back, the tip of the blade slicing through his windbreaker, drawing a thin line of fire across his ribs.
Behind him, Lok found his courage. With a raw shout, he hurled a piece of broken chair leg. It was a clumsy throw, but it distracted the leader for a split second.
It was all Kai needed.
He closed the distance, inside the arc of the knife. His left hand shot up, clamping onto the knife-wielding wrist like a vice. His right hand, fingers curled into the Phoenix Eye Fist, struck not at a muscle, but at the precise nerve cluster on the inside of the man's elbow. A jolt of paralyzing agony shot through the leader's arm. His fingers spasmed open. The knife clattered to the ground.
Kai didn't stop. He drove a knee into the man's groin, and as he doubled over, Kai brought his own forehead down in a brutal, sickening headbutt to the bridge of the man's nose. There was a wet, crunching sound. The leader staggered back, blinded by pain and blood, before collapsing onto the rooftop, motionless.
Silence descended, broken only by Kai's ragged breathing and the muffled sounds of the city. The entire fight had lasted less than thirty seconds.
Lok stared at him, his face a mask of awe and terror. He was looking at a side of his brother he had never seen—not the street brawler, but a machine of calculated, efficient violence. This was not a fight; it was a dissection.
Before either could speak, Kai's phone vibrated in his pocket. A single, sharp pulse.
His blood, still pumping with adrenaline, ran cold. He walked away from the groaning bodies, from the stunned Lok, to the far edge of the roof. He opened the phone.
The message was from Wong's encrypted number. It contained no text. Only a single, high-resolution photograph.
The image was taken from another boat, looking at Chan's weathered trawler. In the hold, illuminated by a dim work light, were several sealed, black, waterproof crates. They were unmarked, nondescript, but they were undeniably, terrifyingly there. A real shipment. The fiction had been made flesh.
Another message followed, text this time.
*Asset performed adequately. Account settled. Your initiative is noted.*
Kai stared at the screen, the city lights below swimming in his vision. He should have felt a wave of relief. He had saved a life, solidified his position, and survived a professional hit. But all he felt was a deeper, more profound terror. Wong had not only believed the lie; he had empowered it. He had materialized a smuggling run out of thin air to validate Kai's decision, and in doing so, had demonstrated a power that was almost godlike.
It wasn't a reprieve. It was a demonstration. It was Wong showing him, in the clearest terms possible, that in this world, he could make anything real. And that made him the most dangerous man Kai had ever known. The fight on the rooftop was just noise. The real battle was happening in the shadows, and he was hopelessly outmatched.