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墨書 Inktalez
The countdown of the cuff chain pressed against my wrist bone, and the fluorescent light at twenty-three fifty-nine flickered like ghostly flames in the dim Dressing Room.
A man in a white suit, Japanese by appearance, clapped his hands lightly with a playbill. The lyrics from "Madame White Snake" seeped through the gaps in his gold teeth: "The broken bridge remains unbroken, yet my heart is torn apart—"
I held an eyeliner pencil, tracing a blue shadow at the corners of my eyes, and in the mirror, I caught sight of his left hand tucked inside his sleeve. The little finger was missing its nail, the wound crusted with dark red scabs—matching the severed finger I had found three days ago in the stairwell of Ballymen.
"Has Boss Zhou switched to singing Martial Actor?"
He suddenly lifted my Mongoose Robe hanging on the coat rack with a teacup lid, revealing copper wires of miniature detonators glinting coldly under the gaslight. I seized his wrist from behind, my thumb pressing down on the watch face: "Tanaka personally ordered Dao Xian Cao; naturally, he would bring some real stuff."
The crystal chandelier above the casino illuminated the poker table brightly. Tanaka Ryokichi's urn sat at the center of the table, while Mei Lan's Jade Earrings glimmered faintly within the ashes.
I tossed three dice, their ivory clattering mixed with the vibrations of the basement's ventilation pipes—Boss Lu's men were digging into the load-bearing wall.
"Four Kings."
I pushed my cards across the center line; Tanaka's eye bags twitched. Suddenly, a waitress in a kimono behind him unfurled a folding fan, and the scent of sandalwood mixed with bitter almonds hit me like a wave.
I grabbed a whiskey and splashed it onto the fan; as the liquid met its surface, blue smoke erupted. The entire floor's electrical circuit tripped simultaneously.
In the darkness, I flicked out a magnesium strip hidden in my pocket watch; when the white light exploded, the casino transformed into an overexposed photograph negative.
A woman clad in Xiangyun Silk leaped down from a beam, her steel spikes slicing through two rogue's throats like a paper cutter through satin.
"The pickling vat in the kitchen!"
Boss Lu's smoky voice echoed from the southeast corner. I knocked over the poker table and dashed toward the corridor; Tanaka fired his gun amidst the chaos, illuminating water stains creeping along the wall.
Thirty-seven steps; at the corner, I turned left three times around the third blue-and-white porcelain vase—amidst the grinding sounds of hidden door gears came the scent of Nitroglycerin.
A female student in an Indanthrene Qipao was loading ammunition into a submachine gun; her tearing open of an envelope made my pupils constrict sharply. On the back of a blueprint for a U.S. Army Armory was drawn in blood the coordinates for Hongkou Orphanage.
The casino dome suddenly lit up with searchlights. Chief Inspector Chen's boots crushed the scattered playing cards on the floor, while the guns from the Police Station trembled behind him.
"Mr. Zhou assisted in apprehending the arsonist," Boss Lu declared, throwing out his credentials, the seal bearing the emblem of the Blue Sky and White Sun stained with fresh blood. Tanaka kicked open a window, trying to jump into the Suzhou River. The sound of my copper chip shattering his kneecap was like cracking a walnut.
He laughed maniacally in the pool of blood as he reached for his pocket watch. At the moment the dial reset to zero, a mushroom cloud rising from the direction of Guangci Hospital illuminated half of the night sky.
"It’s not Nitroglycerin…" Boss Lu ripped open Tanaka's shirt, revealing a Miniature Telegraph still ticking away, tied to his chest. A female student suddenly snatched a pair of scissors and cut through the blue wire; the Japanese code exposed on the back of the watch face matched the layout of an obituary from Shen Bao's front page.
Chief Inspector Chen's handcuffs froze in mid-air. A second explosion echoed from the direction of the French Concession, and amidst the glass rain shattered by the shockwave, I saw Mei Lan's rouge melting in her vanity case. The gold leaf glued to the mirror formed a map of the Japanese Army's submarine docking positions.
"Zha Bei Power Station…" Boss Lu's Jade Ring struck cracks into the map as he suddenly looked up at me, his sideburns sticky with soot. "You have the scent of sulfur soap from Hongkou Bathhouse on your neck." Before he finished speaking, a thunderous crash echoed from the casino basement as a load-bearing wall collapsed, mingling with the sound of rising water from the Suzhou River.
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