Young Writers Society

Tai Po district, Hong Kong

Perimeter lights shown like flickering campfires around the house, directed at it's entrances, gateways, and red-brick walls. The shadows they cast loomed; black charcoal stains painted across the structure and a dark yellow glow glittered out from massive windows like champagne bubbles under lamp light. By anyone's standards the house was magnificent in the oppressing nighttime. An opulent beacon among the urbanized and smog clouded countryside of the Tai Po district.

It also seemed ripe for the picking.

Undoubtedly, the residential palace was home to a politician or businessman. A man that hoarded cash and locked himself away in a plush skyscraper and wiped his ass with linen handkerchiefs. He probably didn't even recycle them. Every time he used the toilet, several dollars worth of fabric in the trash - down the drain. Material that ten year-old kids in sweat shops were paid a nickel a day to sew with machinery five times their size. So what if that handkerchief had cost a kid his finger to a ten inch stitching needle? There were plenty more were he came from. With this obvious richness, the owner of the fine house wouldn't miss a wad of cash from his sock drawer or a couple priceless paintings lifted from his walls. After all, such stolen money would go to people who needed it much more. A house like this would be easy to rob. Snip a few security wires and you were in.

Unfortunately, this particular building would not be an easy hit. Looking closer, a thief would notice three guards armed with automatic machine guns and radios circling the yard twenty four hours a day. He might also pick out the state-of-the art security systems lacing the doors and window sills and the pen of hungry mastiffs kept beside the house. This was not a building some teen off the street could force his way into. Whoever lived inside the palace was a careful man.

Incidentally, men of his lifestyle generally were.

Paranoid bastard, the man thought as he stepped up to the iron gate, watching a guard make his round across the front lawn. The Tong boss spent a fortune on protection and still couldn't help being shot at every other week. If the man could remember correctly, Jin Lee had something like fifteen slugs in his aging body. An offense to airport security. The guy was also a walking target. Too many enemies. It wasn't natural to have so many men out in the streets scheming to blow a hole the size of a golf ball in one's head. When Interpol wasn't hunting him, other gang leaders were. The world just wasn't big enough for men like Jin Lee.

The man shrugged to himself as he pressed the 'talk' button on the gate to house com-link. With any luck that night he would make the world a bigger place.

He spoke his name into the intercom.

“We weren't expecting you tonight, sir,” a guard on the other side said after a pause, “Does Mr. Lee know you are here?”

“No, but he'll want to talk to me. Trust me, tonight's not the night to make your decisions out of an appointment book. Just open the gate.”

The guard paused again. “Yessir,” he said finally.

Soundlessly, the gate eased it's way open. Smooth and efficient. Just like everything else.

The man made his way to the front door, nodding casually to a gun wielding guard, who stared back impassively. The man shook his head as he knocked on the door. He half wondered if Jin Lee picked his security team from the Queen's Guard. Their faces were all like stone.

The door was answered by a massive suited bodyguard, shoulders broad and his head shaven clean. Veins pulsed behind his tattooed neck. Jin Lee always did like 'em big and dumb. Maybe he felt more confident with surface area protecting his body than brains and vigilance. The man smiled to himself. Jin Lee, Jin Lee, you poor naïve old man. After all, hired guns couldn't keep the rotten apple out of the barrel.

The bodyguard wore a perpetual frown. He looked the man up and down carefully. “Mr. Lee is waiting in the study, sir.”

The man simply nodded, edged his way passed the looming guard, and walked down a dimly lit hallway framed with paintings and portraits of deceased relatives. The man picked out a Monet among the crowd of canvas. The painting was Sunrise, blood red and swathed in inky smoke. Symbolizing a new dawn. A new dynasty. His new dynasty. Jin Lee had overstayed his welcome as the Black Dragon Tong leader. It was time for a new sun to rise.

Blood red or not.

The man knocked on the study door. “Enter,” came Jin Lee's voice.

The old man, Jin Lee, sat behind a giant mahogany desk. A small bottle of scotch accompanied by a shot glass was closest to his hand and the polished wood surface was strewn with financial papers and stubbed out cigarette butts. A wrought-iron spiral staircase was planted near the back of the room and led to a loft where books were stuffed into shelves. Jin Lee stared at the man suspiciously as he took a seat, stroking his pepper stained beard.

“And what the hell are you doing here?”

“I want you to reconsider my proposition.”

“So you traveled three thousand miles to beat a dead horse, as our American friends would say.” Jin Lee chuckled mirthlessly. “I could've told you no again over the phone and saved you your time and money.”

“I won't take no for an answer, sir. Think of the money we could reap. Think of the power we could hold - ”

“'Here are my three treasures. Guard and keep them! The first is pity; the second, frugality; the third, refusal to be foremost of all things under heaven',” Jin Lee quoted, pouring a glass of scotch and smiling.

The man shook his head. “Don't give me that Confucius-say crap. Listen to what I'm saying. Our Tong could have complete dominance. Billions of dollars would appear in your bank account. Everyone wins!”

“Laozi said that, not Confucius.”

“Whatever.”

“Two very big differences, you know.”

The man stood up, furious, “Why won't you support this? We have the technology, we have the means. You give the word and we all become filthy rich. But you won't. Why?”

Jin Lee shrugged and sipped his scotch. “Honor.”

“Honor,” The man repeated in disbelief.

“I'm not a greedy man. I take what I need – what we need – and leave the rest alone. I'm not a terrorist. And I refuse to give my Tong that reputation. Triads are ancient and honorable groups, despite what you and other people think. I will not have my hands stained with innocent blood.”

“Honor is overrated. You're weak, sir. Honor is for the weak.”

“It's tradition.”

“To hell with tradition!” The man whispered, planting his knuckled onto the desk. “This will happen, Jin Lee. If you won't order it, I will.”

“You will not. Last time I checked, orders were issued by me.”

“Not for long,” the man said quietly.

Jin Lee paused and stared at the man, scrutinizing him uncertainly. A threat.

The man continued, “You're old, Jin Lee. You're what? Seventy-one? A number of diseases and maladies could strike you down any day now. You could also take a nasty fall – accidental, of course – and break your hip, maybe your neck. Any day, Jin Lee. Any moment. Death is inevitable.”

The man drew a gun from his suit coat and aimed it at Jin Lee's head. The aging Chinese leader froze but made no attempt to rise or move. He stayed where he was, chest heaving, hand frozen around his shot glass.

The man smiled. “Today's as good as any, Jin Lee. Stand up, hands in the air.”

Jin Lee stood carefully, hands trembling in the air, “They'll know it was you. At least ten people saw you enter the house. You won't get away with this. Murdering the boss - ”

The man turned Jin Lee around roughly and prodded him forward with the gun barrel, “Oh, this isn't murder. This is an accident. A nasty fall. Up the staircase, sir.”

Slipping his hand over Jin Lee's mouth firmly and grinding the gun into his back, the man led him to the staircase leading to the loft. They ascended slowly; Jin Lee a prisoner being led to the gallows. The man smiled.

As they reached the top step, the man dropped his gun to a reading chair, gripped the bosses greasy hair and thrust both hands forward, twisting the old man's neck sickeningly out of proportion. He heard a crack as his neck broke. Jin Lee's body went limp.

Quickly, the man dropped the Tong leader to the ground and ripped open his suit. Jin Lee's eyes bulged. He was still alive, but he couldn't breath. Asphyxiation would set in fast. However, that was not the way Jin Lee would die.

From his pocket, the man drew a boxy prototype defibrillator: the newest in a portable “miniature” line. He detached one electrode – no bigger than his palm - and placed it above Jin Lee's heart, the other he slipped below the pectoral. Jin Lee's eyes darted in their sockets frantically. The man switched on the defibrillator and mashed his finger down on the red button. Jin Lee's bare chest jerked up roughly and his heart stopped beating. His eyes glazed over and he laid still. The man grinned. Instant heart attack.

Grunting, he tore the electrodes from the old man's chest, lifted the heavy corpse, propped it against the loft railing and flung it over the banister with all his might. Jin Lee toppled through nothingness for a moment – limbs flailing grotesquely – before his back collided with a glass coffee table. The table exploded in a shimmering shards of light.

The man started screaming for help, snatched up his gun, and ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time. Within minutes three bodyguards bowled their way into the study, alerted by the man's yells, to find the Black Dragon Tong boss lying on the floor, dead of a heart attack, his neck broken because of the fall from the loft. They would find their visitor very shaken and distressed, babbling about the unfortunate incident. He would leave the house moments later – excused from the scene - hail a taxi, and drive to the airport, his job finished.

As he sat in the back of the cab, the man watched the sun rising over the skyscrapers of the Tai Po district.

It was blood red.

It was always blood red.

A new dynasty had begun.