24991201 | 0024

  Guan Yin Temple | Repulse Bay | Hong Kong SAR

  22°14'16.68"N

  114°11'21.12"E

  He awoke with a start.

  The soft glow of a single, dimmed lightbulb dangled from the ceiling as a crimson tear.

  A soft breeze through the windows with bar-slits shaped as bamboo.

  He groaned; his voice hoarse.

  The aftereffect of resuscitation.

  The smell of sea-salt and rain.

  He raised his hand.

  Rain.

  He rose.

  Raindrops striking the roof, the leaves, the damp earth softly.

  He turned.

  He was laying on a straw cot upon a cement block.

  Morbid.

  He thought with a grim smile.

  The unpainted concrete walls of his quarters were silent, unadorned.

  His swung his feet from the stone-cold bed and touched the ground.

  He turned and saw a glass of water.

  Remembering how coarse his throat was, he drained the glass before standing up.

  His armor and weapons were left in a corner.

  Next to a pile of neatly-coiled bandages.

  Adam grunted.

  He picked up the roll of bandages and sat down again.

  He slowly began to wrap the rune-inscribed bandages around his arms and legs.

  As he did, his mind recalled the last conversation before he went under.

  I hope I never see you again.

  Adam winced.

  He recalled the face of David Black.

  The piercing blue eyes of the Mujāhid.

  Disappointment.

  Betrayed.

  He had stood beside the med-pod prepped for Adam.

  His men, the Al-Fidāqīn, stood around him.

  They were silent, stoic.

  But their eyes.

  Judgment.

  David spoke briefly, said Adam and his Harbingers were to be spirited away.

  The man held a crumpled missive.

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  A handwritten note.

  Bearing the seal of the High Priestess, Her Eminence herself.

  His knuckles were white.

  Orders were orders.

  The Harbingers were to be extracted.

  Smuggled via cadaver route.

  To Hong Kong.

  Adam felt the sting of the Mujāhid’s words.

  The words had not been spoken with anger.

  That was what lingered.

  They had been spoken with restraint.

  David had fulfilled the order.

  He had done what the Church asked of him.

  But he had not offered his hand.

  Adam found no words.

  No words to soothe the man’s inconsolable rage.

  Harbingers, indeed.

  Adam donned his armor.

  His mind raced back to the holo.

  Floodzone Cairo.

  The River Nile ran red.

  Cairo Crimson.

  Heaven’s Fall.

  Hundreds of thousands dead.

  Millions displaced.

  What have we done?

  Adam took a deep breath.

  Exhaled.

  He took another.

  He retrieved his weapons.

  Lastly, he slung the Black Sword over his shoulder and adjusted his cloak.

  He parted the straw mat that served as a curtain and stepped out of his quarters.

  The corridor was deserted and bare.

  He passed rooms with the same spartan décor.

  He ascended the stairs at the end and found himself in a temple.

  A fine drizzle hung over bay.

  Adam looked up and beheld an ancient temple.

  The rain silvered the stone steps leading up to the temple.

  It softened the distant neon glow bleeding from the city beyond the hills.

  Hong Kong.

  The city that never truly slept.

  Adam remembered now where he was.

  He shook off the side-effects of resuscitation.

  The temple stood at the edge of the sea.

  The noise of the city felt far away.

  Muffled behind wind, tide, and time.

  The temple gates stood half-open.

  He headed towards it.

  Adam passed beneath carved beams darkened by decades of incense smoke.

  The air was thick with sandalwood and something older—resinous, sweet, faintly bitter at the back of the throat.

  Incense coils hung from the rafters in slow-burning spirals, their embers glowing like patient stars.

  Red lanterns lined the covered walkway, their silk skins dampened by mist.

  Thin threads of smoke drifted lazily upward, then sideways, disturbed by the ocean breeze sneaking through the corridors.

  The primary urn adorned with dragons and mythological creatures was still lit with hundreds of joss-sticks even at this hour.

  They glowed warmly against the night, halos forming around them as droplets gathered and fell in soft ticks against stone.

  The characters painted upon them—prosperity, peace, happiness—blurred slightly under moisture, blessings smudged by weather.

  Candles flickered in shallow bronze trays before side altars.

  Some had burned low, wax pooling unevenly in rain-speckled hollows.

  Others stood newly lit, their flames bowing and straightening in the wind like disciplined soldiers.

  The scent of melted wax mingled with incense and salt air, grounding the space in something tangible and human.

  Adam contemplated for a moment who had lit these at this hour.

  Beyond the covered walkway, the courtyard opened.

  Polished tiles reflected the lantern light in fractured patterns, each puddle a trembling mirror.

  Rain gathered in the grooves between stone slabs, tracing old lines worn by centuries of footsteps.

  Wind moved through the banyan trees at the perimeter, leaves whispering in low, restless tones.

  From somewhere down the slope came the muted hush of waves meeting sand.

  The sea was invisible from here, swallowed by night.

  A vast void of darkness.

  But Adam felt its presence.

  Vast, indifferent, eternal.

  He moved through towards the main pantheon.

  He beheld the three ancient sculptures, wrought of gold and metal, adorned with gems.

  Adam regarded the sculptures.

  He knew them by name.

  The Goddess of Mercy.

  The God of War.

  The God of the Hunt.

  He lit no joss-sticks or candles.

  He offered no obeisance.

  He merely regarded them, and moved on.

  His boots made no echo on the pavement, only a dampened contact against stone.

  He passed small offerings left by unseen hands.

  Three oranges arranged carefully on a porcelain plate, a folded note weighted beneath a smooth pebble, sticks of incense planted upright in a pot of grey ash.

  There were no visitors at this hour.

  No murmured prayers.

  No clicking of prayer beads.

  The faint electric hum of distant city towers bleeding faintly over the ridge.

  A reminder that this pocket of quiet existed within a machine-driven world.

  Ahead, beneath the open sky, the bronze statue of the Goddess of the Sea rose from her pedestal.

  She faced the sea.

  Rain beaded along her outstretched hand, gathered at her fingertips, and fell soundlessly into the dark.

  Lantern light caught the curves of her robe and cast long shadows across the courtyard floor.

  Compassion carved in metal.

  Serenity forged in stillness.

  Adam stepped into the open.

  The drizzle lightly drenched his cloak and shoulders, the scent of incense fading behind him as salt air grew stronger.

  He stood before the statue.

  He did not bow.

  He did not pray.

  He walked past flickering candles and the humble offerings left drenched in the rain.

  He waded through smoke and rain and reflected light, until he reached the railing at the edge of the courtyard.

  Beyond it, the sea stretched unseen into blackness.

  He rested his hands against cool metal.

  The drizzle continued.

  The gods within the pantheon regarded him with steady eyes.

  Adam stood at the railing.

  He placed his hands to rest lightly upon the damp metal.

  He let the rain washed all over him.