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Twenty-Eight

Lao stared at Chen in amazement. "Are you sure?" he said for the fourth time. Chen did not bother to speak; he merely nodded, wearily. "Well, that's bloody ambitious, I must say. Even for Hell. I told you letting that demonic vice cop hang around was bad news."

"I don't think it has anything to do with Zhu Irzh," Chen said, propelled reluctantly to the demon's defense. "He was as much in the dark as we were, remember, unless he's a spectacularly good liar." Somehow, recalling Zhu Irzh's limpid golden eyes, Chen did not think that this was the case. "It's the Ministry of Epidemics."

"What are you going to do about it?"

"I'm not sure what I can do. I could alert Heaven, via that one." Chen gestured towards the motionless figure of Kuan Yin. "In fact, I think I already have." He dimly remembered Kuan Yin's presence hovering at his shoulder in Pearl's spectral bedroom. "But Heaven plays by its own rules."

"A sort of Prime Directive," Lao mused. Catching Chen's puzzled glance, he said, "American television show. Science fiction. Oh, never mind."

"Heaven likes humans to do its dirty work for it, quite frankly. Anyway, as you are aware, I am not exactly in Kuan Yin's good books at the moment and I don't want to push my luck. Besides which, I think there's a good chance she actually knows about all this already. As I just said, Heaven plays by its own rules. I'll have to tell the medical services here, but there's always the problem of being believed. People never want to see what's under their noses, especially where Hell's concerned."

"The Minister of Health's an atheist," Lao remarked. Chen snorted.

"The Minister of Health's in pathological denial. We'll do what we can at this end."

"How do you start working on an antidote for a disease that doesn't even exist yet?" Lao remarked.

"It'll exist soon enough," Chen replied grimly. He recalled the pearl: that gem of information snatched from the mind of a girl already dead, remembered the shock as he grasped its meaning. It came back to him now, that fragment of conversation between Pearl's father and the demon who had come to watch her die, echoing in Pearl's own whispering voice:

Your sacrifice won't be in vain. The Ministry of Epidemics is making a plague: one that will kill millions. They need blood. They need blood, and the souls of the innocent. Human blood and innocent souls, to make a drug that takes demons into Heaven.

And there the fragment of memory had ended. Chen stood up, feeling light headed with too little sleep and the shock of revelation.

"What now?" Lao asked.

"I'm going to call the precinct, tell Captain Sung what I think is going on. I'm also going to e-mail Zhu Irzh, if the bioweb's working." He took out his phone and began tapping characters onto the screen.

"The demon? That's a bit of a risk, isn't it? What if he's involved?"

"He's not working for the Ministry, I'm sure of that. Pearl seemed convinced that the Ministry of Epidemics is working independently from the rest of Hell—that's why they wanted this kept so quiet. And Zhu Irzh could be a useful contact, especially if we give him information." He watched, holding his breath, as the connection was finally sustained and the e-mail vanished into the ether between the worlds. "As far as Singapore Three is concerned, apart from yourself, there's one person here who can be trusted to notify the relevant authorities and get the city on full alert. And that's No Ro Shi."

"The demon-hunter? Actually, that's brilliant. He's well connected, highly motivated, and he doesn't give a shit about what anyone thinks of him."

"No Ro Shi can handle things much better than I can," Chen said, picking up his jacket. "And since I won't be here, he's the ideal replacement."

"Since you won't be here? Where are you going?" Lao asked, and then realization dawned. His face grew even longer with dismay. "Oh."

"Well," Chen said. "Where do you think?"

 

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Framed