This one is some guy called Arnaud Delacorte, got into Hong Kong yesterday. Didn't have much advance warning, so this won't be subtle. Bugged his limo and set up the hit around Lily Street. No matter where you're going in Hong Kong, a good driver will take the Lily Street shortcut. How good is this shortcut? For one thing, this will be the first ever hit there since the British occupation.

Here he comes now. Nice simple plan for starters; got Jane Wilkes stationed on the right to blow out his tire, running him into the back of an old Ford Pinto. Ah Pinto, the poor man's cruise missile…

Damn — did Jane miss? No, because the car lurched. Self–repairing tires? Huh. Plan B is Helmut with the sniper rifle and armor piercing shells. Not as much of an "accident" but it is a Black Spot…

Helmut didn't miss, it's just that the armor wasn't pierced. Is this a depleted uranium Cadillac? Screw it. I've got plastique under the manhole cover…. THERE! Burn! Flipping like a milk cap, all right. Heavy armor won't be much fun when you're trying to get out of a burning car, Mr. Arnaud Delacorte… oh, that's him. I recognize him, even on fire. Staying in the car is a slow roast, but getting out you'll face Jane and Helmut. There they go. Wonder which one hit first? Doesn't really matter, I'll bonus both of…

Oh no.

No.

This is not happening. Arnaud Delacorte is not turning into a burning, dying… dog? Wolf? Jackal?

Arnaud Delacorte is a Lodge member. Was. Until I killed him.

I killed a Lodge member.

I'm a dead man now.

This is not happening. This is not… no, dammit, it is happening. Here comes Jane. She's confused.

"Did you see that? Did you see him turn into an animal?"

"Jane, I need you to ask no questions. Get my car. Now."

"But…"

"NOW!"

Jane goes. It is thirty seconds since I killed a Lodge member. How long until they get me?

Home. They'll go for my home first. Can I get there in time? No. Yes. That's the first thing they'll expect. But I've got money, guns, my computer… got to risk it. If nothing else, to de-attune.

Jane's back.

"Pick up Helmut, then take me home."

Who could have set me up? No one, no one except another Lodge member, and they wouldn't. Can I explain? Maybe they'll understand I was duped. Sure, they'll take away my money and my power and my Feng Shui site, but I'll live.

No chance. The Jackals or the Wolves or whatever family he was from will want me dead for revenge. The Lions will want me dead because it's proper. The Tigers because it's better to be safe than sorry, the Sharks because it's a good excuse and the Scorpion because, well, just because.

Lucky we're right on the Lily Street shortcut. I don't even hear sirens yet.

Eight minute drive home, can't waste that. I could call someone… but who? They're all Pledged, dammit, I'd just be tipping my hand. Maybe someone who's not too important… like Alice. Yeah.

"Hello?"

"Alice."

"Hi Tommy… what's up?"

"Tangled Lemon Spiral Dormitory, Alice."

"What is your bidding, my master?" God bless deep hypnosis, but what kind of geek brainwasher came up with that line?

"Alice, you must destroy the Top Hat Club, as soon as possible. Now. Get everyone you can, with as many guns as you can. Do it now." I hang up.

Good. Only someone of my rank or higher will know the code words to stop her. The Top Hat club is too well guarded for her and her cronies, but it'll be a distraction — might keep the Lodge from finding out I killed their brother for another fifteen minutes at least.

Damn. Twenty years in the Order, down the toilet. They'll hunt me down like a mad dog for betraying them… no chance to convince them I'm innocent… yeah, no way around it.

My only hope of survival is to betray them quick enough, and badly enough, that one of their rival factions will protect me. Maybe the Architects, they do business my way… nah. Everything I hear says that they look at the human brain the way a grease monkey teenager looks at a hot rod. An awe inspiring tool, but it won't stop them from popping the hood open to poke around…

The Eaters of the Lotus are probably my best bet, dammit. Wizards from the deep damn past, they give me the creeps but they scare the hell out of the Lodge. Gotta be them. Besides, I turncoated one of them three months ago. All he wanted was his weight in silver — a bargain at twice the price. With a couple Pledged surgeons helping him, he carved some kind of Inscription Against Mind Control on the top of my skull. Selling secrets wouldn't be easy if they could just turn me into one of their little zombie bootblacks…

Of course, they'd just as soon see me deep fried, so I have to offer them something sweet. In fact, I'm going to have to pay heavy just to avoid being killed out of hand. Not a problem: I've got a couple secrets they'd dearly love to know.

Next call to my banker.

"Dooley, take twelve mil from Swiss account 80021634 and put it in National Bank of the Caymans, account J21LM6006."

"Good day to you too, Mr. Gonnorelli."

"No time for pleasantries, Dooley, this is top priority."

"Mr. Gonnorelli, you know I cannot perform such a large transaction simply on the say-so of a voice on a telephone."

He's right; it could easily be a simulation. Still frustrating though.

"Screw you Dooley. You're a dead man." I hang up. I've got better things to do than whack a banker, but he doesn't know that. Let him sweat. Time for a cigar. I should call someone, but it's no use and I'm craving my nic fix. I've got maybe a dozen of these cancer-proof cigars left — damn things cost over a grand each to produce. I can kiss that Pledge perk goodbye too.

My apartment building. Literally — I own the whole high rise. Not for long, of course. It's nine minutes, twenty seconds since I betrayed the Lodge. They probably won't bother making me a pauper until sundown. They'll want to make me a corpse first.

"Jane, point. Helmut, at my side."

I've got my hand in my pocket on my .32. Not a huge gun like Helmut carries, but I've had it since my days with the Family in Jersey, back when I didn't know nothing about what was really going on. Jersey in the sixties; it's like my golden age. I thought loyalty, whiskey and baseball bats made the world go 'round. What a punk.

"G'day, Mr. Gonnorelli."

"Patrick, come with me. Now."

Pat's the doorman, looks about as dangerous as June Cleaver, but I guess he did stuff in Korea that would curl your hair. He's a little pudgy and over the hill, but I'll take what I can get.

No one in the lobby looks suspicious. They all could be killers. We get in the elevator without incident, and I put in my key for the penthouse apartment.

Now would be a sweet time to do it. One cut cable, no fuss. It's ten minutes, ten seconds. No guns, no police, just a terrible accident for one of Hong Kong's many legitimate businessmen.

The elevator dings. I'm home.

"Jane, call Conrad on the phone over there, and hit the red button marked 'scramble.' Tell him to get here pronto. Helmut, you're with me." Jane jumps to it as I stride towards my study. Good girl, Jane. "Patrick, guns are in the, whatsit, the credenza. Take an uzi and a shotgun and kill anyone who comes out the elevator."

I flick on the computer. "Helmut, you know how to work one of these things?"

"A little."

"Good. It's all in that Windows crap anyhow — got a pre-release of Windows 99, so it actually works. Log on to the 'Innernet' icon when it pops up, and the password is 'cordy42', that's C-O-R-D-Y four two, got it?"

"What's 'cordy42'?"

"None of your damn business. Now shut up, I gotta meditate."

Giving up my apartment is going to be one of the worst aspects of this whole betrayal thing. Not only is it beautiful and in a swell part of town — it's a Feng Shui site.

I didn't believe it until I felt it. I mean, what? There's some nebulous life energy that controls us all? Sure, right; or maybe someone watched 'Star Wars' a few too many times. But Cordelia explained it to my sorry Jersey gangster ass, very patiently, along with the time war and changing history and ruling the world — the whole mess. Most important was the chi — this whole "wind of life" idea. Some places act like magnifying glasses, some places pull all this force together. You own one of these spots, these Feng Shui spots, and suddenly this chi isn't just flowing through you — you're flowing through it too.

It sounded like crap, until I attuned. Then I could feel it. I could feel the world going through me, and me going through it, and for the first time I wasn't struggling, and for the first time I felt like Earth was somewhere I belonged.

Cordelia put me onto a weak site, 42 East Genesee in Syracuse, New York. My apartment is a strong one, and it's time to cut my cord.

I can't stay here, and once my fellow Pledged are in control of it, I'll be one screwed dude if I'm still attuned. They'll fly in some chi doctors from the mainland to fix this site good, to kill it, choke of the flow of the life. I'll be locked in it like a grave, like a rat in a trap.

It hurts to let go, but I have to.

I have.

I open my eyes. Helmut must have dipped into my gun collection — he's loaded up for bear. Good boy — though the members of the Bear family in the Lodge don't want to come to Hong Kong, any more than any of the other families do. Lucky for me. Their human agents, dopes like me, are bad enough; I wouldn't last a heartbeat if an enforcer like Senior Ocho or Lord Of The Earthquake got put on my case.

It's been seventeen minutes. They have to know by now.

I get on Innernet. It's a computer system a couple years or ahead of the technology allowed the rest of the world, and only the Lodge and the top Pledged are allowed in. If I really had been planning to betray them, I could have cooked up some horrible mischief in advance and set it loose on Innernet. Instead, I'll just screw up whatever comes along while I look for clues about my punishment.

Uh huh… 'baked goods' in Brazil, no biggie… hidden biotech facility found in Antarctica? Another lost nuke for that, I suspect; and they wonder why the ozone is so screwy. Guiding Hand operatives suspected near the Eiffel Tower? Maybe I ought to help them out; if the Lodge thinks I shafted them for the Hand, they won't suspect me of going to the Lotus. I'll just punch up a fake biochemical agent heading for Vatican City, that'll get the European families feeling antsy… Now let's click on the Hong Kong icon…

Oh no.

They've put a killkid on me. All you vultures, come on down from the tree. Tommy Gonnorelli is today's blue plate special. I only had access to a killkid one time, to monkeywrench some serious Guiding Hand action. There are only seven in the whole world who survived their upbringing — they tried the process on maybe a thousand. If murder was an Olympic sport, they'd be the gold medal Dream Team. The one I saw didn't even have a name — I just called him "killboy." Tall, scrawny and black, he had no body fat and looked like a damn muscle diagram. We sent him in alone, and to cover up the deaths we had to claim it was a train wreck. Yeah, a train wreck that put seventeen bullets through seventeen skulls. Eight between the eyes, three through temples and six at the tops of their necks. Exactly the same place for each shot, less than half an inch deviation. I'm screwed. That's not even counting the ones killboy did in with his bare hands. I'm a dead man.

No, no I'm not. Is that the sound of a helicopter? Pat is no slouch, Jane's a heavy duty pro, ditto Helmut, and we've got the drop on it. Her. Computer says "killgirl 5" — that number next to it can't be a confirmed body count, can it? Good god, she's Murder Inc.!

That was the elevator. Come on Pat, let her have it…

That wasn't a shotgun blast. That wasn't an uzi. That was a damn pistol shot, and that thud must have been Pat falling. Oh no.

"Boss, what…?"

"Shut the door Helmut!"

He pulls it closed as I hear gunfire and screams, then a second thud. I pull out my .32 and press my ear to the wall. I think I hear Jane whimpering. Then there's that crack — broken neck. Nothing else sounds like it. Poor Jane.

"Mr. Gonnorelli. Surrender and you will not be immediately killed."

Got a voice like ice. Just dropped two prime agents and she sounds like she's asking the boss for a raise, instead of demanding that I give up my life.

I don't say anything, but I hear the chopper. She hears it too, and opens up on the wall and door.

Good luck, killgirl 5. When the Lodge finds a Feng Shui site, they make sure it's nice and tough. She'll need a rocket launcher to get into my office, and one shouldn't be available to her for another three minutes at least.

Unfortunately, time is on her side. I'm trapped in this office. Every second brings backup for her and cuts off options for me. I have to get out and regain the initiative.

It's gonna take one smooth movement. Breathe in. Rush the door, turn the knob and shove Helmut through it in front of me.

"Boss, what?" His dying words. One shot to his brain, but I have my head low, behind his chest as we go through the door.

Killgirl 5 is small, blonde, muscular, dressed in black lycra. She's in a perfect shooter's pose, absolutely still. I start shooting. She goes from stillness to a blur — seems like there's no start to the movement, but I get a lucky shot. Lucky .32, it's never let me down, and the shells are more high tech no-nos from the Lodge. Igniter bullets. She actually grunts as the shell throws her across the room and explodes, but I don't look, I'm running towards the window.

My leg! They must want me alive if she's shooting my leg. I jump through the window.

Conrad's chopper is out there, lower than I thought, and I'm going towards the blades, then the air vortex slams me down towards the street, but there's a rope ladder… got it! I swing and twist, look up.

Killgirl 5 is on fire, and it looks like I took out her right arm, and she's jumping out the window. She's coming right towards my rope ladder.

Only one chance. Gotta make this shot. Leg hurts, I'm swaying, the chopper is too loud, she's flying right at me, but it's my lucky .32…

The force of the igniter blows her off trajectory. Conrad is reeling me in. She's spinning, falling, really burning, and I doubt even a killkid can survive a hundred story fall. So long, babe… holy crow! She shot the chopper!

It's shaking and spinning, and I'm getting pulled in.

"Conrad!"

"Don't move too much, sir!"

He's a pro, but no way am I not getting buckled in… hello? Is that a paraglider? I never used one, but I saw the briefing video. I look up.

"To the right, sir! No, not too far!"

Conrad is steering the chopper by shifting our weight. That psycho chick must have hit the guidance rotor in back! We're diving towards the street. Looks like most of the Hong Kong cops are down there. I'll take my chances with the paraglider.

"Sir, that's my escape…" Conrad's dying words, probably. I'm not sticking around to find out. I leap out and pop the wings.

"OWWW!"

Never felt such pain in my armpits before, damn! Got to keep a hold of the .32 though. Oh and the cops are shooting at me. Are those cop cars Tauruses? Where's the gas tank on one of those… have a little igniter action, Mr. Copper Man.

Jeez. Here I am, shooting at the cops again. You can take the boy out of Jersey, but you can't take Jersey out of the boy. Crunch! Poor Conrad, but if I can land this damn thing close enough to the crashing chopper, the cops will probably be too scared of shrapnel to close in. Better close my eyes. If I remember right, the fireball from one of those can be pretty blinding…

"AAAAH!" There go my eyebrows, but the cops have stopped shooting. Where's the ground…?

"AIIIEEE!" My leg. Damn, it's useless. I flap to keep balance, and I see a couple of cops staring at me. Their faces are burned, they must have been facing the explosion. They look stunned. I kill them both. Was that Lieutenant Yow?

Off with the wings. Into the car. On with the sirens. On with the radio. Lessee if I can still lie good to the fuzz…

"Gonnorelli was not in the chopper, repeat, not in the chopper!" I say.

"Report?"

What the hell. "This is Lieutenant Yow, commencing hot pursuit of suspect on motorcycle!" I spin the wheel, tromp the gas…

"OWWW!" She would have to shoot me in my gas-pedal leg. Let's try the left… that's awkward, but I usually drive with both feet anyhow. Time to turn this car around and get going. Pretty soon the other cops are following me, figuring I'm their Authority Figure. Ah, cops. Always up for a game of follow the leader.

If this is Yow's car… I reach under the dashboard. Oh yeah; it's a James Bond Special. Yow always did know how to get the goodies. I hit the button and feel the engine change pitch, and there's that lurch as the wheels pop another foot out and down, turning the car into some sort of weird dune buggy Taurus on steroids.

"Gonnorelli has abandoned the motorcycle and has commandeered a tan Mercury sedan, exercise extreme caution! Remember, take him alive!"

Lucky for me the Mercury is trying to outrun us. They say there's never a cop around Hong Kong when you need one; that's why I base my plans around crooks.

"He's heading for 822 North Yang. I'm going to try to head him off!"

"How do you know where…?"

"That's classified! I'm taking Dog Street, the rest of you keep the pressure on, and I want backup waiting at Yang. Let's get him!"

I peel off, and they take off after him. Just like a bull in the ring, they rush past me. 822 is a big Hand stronghold, that should give them something gristly to chew on while I make my way to The Jade Mask.

This leg is driving me nuts. Now that the heat is off, for two and a half minutes at least, I can try to stick something in to…

"AAARGH!"

…stop the bleeding. Need something to tie it in place. Hey, my necktie! Damn shame about the silk — but right now, not bleeding to death is a higher priority.

Ow ow ow. Well, if I handle the next ten minutes wrong, I won't have to worry about my leg hurting. Either I'll be dead, or I'll be in such exquisite torture from other areas, the leg won't even…

Here we are. Deep breath. Hands open — gun's not going to do much good when I'm hurt and outnumbered. I hate this.

The Jade Mask is a nightclub, so it's abandoned in the day. Door's locked… oh, it's a Cho Nai lock. Figures; the Pledged would make sure that the lock on an enemy Feng Shui site was produced by one of our companies. Where's that Cho Nai master key… there we go. 'Unpickable,' well, that's true — but I'm not picking.

Pretty gloomy place… what was that? A sound from the back. Ok, got to be cool, we'll just see if we can hear what he's saying… high piping voice, yep, he's a Lotus eunuch…

"I'll see you tonight sweetie…"

Huh? A eunuch with a girlfriend, that's novel…

"Who's there?"

Suddenly I'm picked up and flung across the room.

"Uggh!"

Oh god… did he switch the gravity on me or what? I'm pinned on the wall like a moth, and he's just pointing his hand at me.

"I'll call back, darling. Something just came up."

He makes a gesture, and the pressure increases. Then his eyes flick to my leg, and he grins.

"AAAIIIIIIIEEEE!"

He's probing my leg with his little magic fingers, they're like claws…

"Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?"

"I'm Tommy Gonnorelli… grand transcended master of the Hong Kong branch of the Order of the Wheel."

He laughs. No, he titters, dammit.

"And what would the legendary Tommy Goner, Hong Kong head of Pledged operations, be doing here?"

"Depends on you."

"Really?" He tweaks my leg again.

"If you screw up, I'll be dying here."

"You may be dying regardless."

"Yes, but if you screw up, we'll be dying together in a hail of gunfire. Or in a truck crash. Or any other damn thing my replacement as of… oh, about twenty minutes now… would think to flame out this site with."

His eyes narrow.

"How did you find out about this place?"

"We've been watching it for months, along with one of your other Hong Kong locations."

The pain in my leg starts again, but this time I'm ready for it.

"Which site?"

I just wince. I can feel my tears… then he lets me drop. I exhale hard. Then I blink as my gun flies out of my pocket. It opens midflight — the bullets landing in a fish tank, the gun looping itself on a light fixture ten feet above the dance floor.

"Why should I believe you?"

"The Lodge set the Lotus up as the hatchet men for the Silver Dragons. It was called 'Operation Killdeer' and your man Jueding Shelun took the fall. Someone called 'Mr. X' was the Lodge mastermind, and that's all I know about that."

"Hm… knowing about Shelun is… interesting."

"I can tell you everything about Hong Kong operations. I can tell you about the technology the Lodge won't let the rest of the world have. I can even tell you the Lodge's greatest secret — and their greatest fear."

His eyes narrow. I've got him interested.

"Tell me, then."

"The Lodge are the descendants of transformed animals. Back in your time juncture, a bunch of doggies and kitties and monkeys meditated themselves into human form — and then they stole the planet from the Four Monarchs and soft-pedalled the magic real hard. Too much magic, and they're back to 'two legs good, four legs bad' again. They hate Hong Kong because magic works here, and they hate you Lotus guys because you work magic."

He snorts. "We long suspected as much."

"Sure you did."

Time for the big gamble. I hope I recognized this guy right from the dossier…

"…Especially after you personally turned a transformed shark back into his native form eight months ago in Minnesota. Isn't that right… Yuan Pei?"

He tries not to let his eyes get wide, but it's clear to me he spent more time reading scrolls and brewing up frog's leg potions than he ever spent bluffing at poker.

"The Shark family has called out blood rights on you… now, wouldn't you like to know what that means? What the families of the Lodge are? How they're aligned? Who runs things, and who follows along?"

"I would indeed, as would my masters."

"They can know everything, if you can get me to them alive."

"You leave that to me…"

Into the basement we go. Something stinks to high heaven.

"Where are we going? I ain't up for a long walk."

"Have no fear, Mr. Goner."

We round a corner. Oh no.

No self-respecting sewer would have stuff like this in it. It looks like we just crawled into someone's large intestine, as decorated by an H. R. Giger tapeworm. Fleshy pods that seem to breathe, but hooked into screens and keyboards. Pipes and guns and doorways that look like they were born, not built — and like they mutated in the womb.

In the floor, an eye opens. Arms like a preying mantis's reach from the walls and gently touch my shoulders.

This is not the work of the Lotus. This is future stuff. This lab belongs to the Architects of the New Flesh.

"But… Yuan? How…?"

"You are not the only one who knows how to betray, Mr. Goner. The Lotus could gave me power — at the cost of mutilating my body. The Architects have power as well… the power to restore me.

"Have you ever been in love, Mr. Goner? I doubt it. I never was until I travelled to the future. In the year 2056, I fell in love with a beautiful woman — but more, I fell in love with a society where one's birth, one's station, make no difference. As a 'lesser' noble in my own time I was spurned, humiliated, and eventually castrated by an uncaring and corrupt court. The Lotus gave me a taste of revenge — but the Architects offer something sweeter yet."

"Your manhood back."

"Yes — but in more than the crude way you mean. Certainly they can restore my virility, can enable me to… well, anyhow, that's the least of it. They have also offered me a place of honor in a great world order. They have offered me a cause to believe in."

"What's in it for them? What do they get from you?"

"From me? They get the skills of a 'classic' sorcerer. They get a mole in the Lotus network. Finally, Mr. Goner, they get you — and you are a very ripe plum indeed."

He's gloating, overconfident, I'm screwed — might as well try the oldest, stalest trick in the book. I look glance over his shoulders and widen my eyes just a bit.

He fell for it? That one was old when he was born! I'm almost too surprised to hit him, but I catch him good with a chunky gold nugget ring I got in Chicago.

"Yeah! Maybe next time you know better!"

I'm pounding him as hard and fast as I can. I let up now and he'll cook me. He's turned his back, trying to protect his head, but I've cracked this kind of shell before. Trick is, just reach in and dig for the eyes…

"That will be quite enough."

Who said that? Then there's this weird skip and my hands are empty, there's some chick pointing this ugly, hairy gun at me but I can't pay much attention because there's things touching me from the walls. Arms, tentacles, feelers — I can feel them oozing into my clothes, running through my hair, probing at my scalp. Something hard and sharp touches me at each temple, and the last thing I hear is the high, piping laugh of Yuan Pei, the Lotus betrayer. It sounds like the squeaking of a rat.

TacOps Report:

Subject Thomas Gonnorelli

So far we have been able to recover only the last twenty-nine minutes of the subject's recollections. However, these short-term memories are extremely vivid and offer a wealth of knowledge about the so-called "Lodge" as well as glimpses into the mentality of their less paranormal agents.

Some of his thoughts do not square up completely with our perceptions of the situation; it is possible that even a servant of Gonnorelli's rank was habitually lied to by his masters. On the other hand, these small anomalies may have been caused by superficial shifts in the flow of the timestream, perhaps even caused by our own deep history operatives.

Long-term memory calibration has begun, but as you know, the process is an uncertain one at best. So far we've restored the memories of his first successful shoplifting attempt and his first failed sexual experience; anything of permanent value will require a great investment of time.

It is my recommendation that Gonnorelli's corpse be shipped to BHP headquarters in New Des Moines for further examination. In the 1990s juncture, the corpse is an object that must be guarded; once we move it to 2056, it will become a resource ripe for exploitation.

Strange Vistas #27 Art: "At the Mountain of Madness" (Big File)

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