Free Jade Dragon by James Swallow

Heart” video: the
exaggerated pigtails, the microskirt and bobbysox had scored huge
numbers with the lolita-complex fans. “They love me. They’ll
understand.”
    “Understand what, sweetie?”
    “I saw it.” She tapped her temple, and Ropé noticed that her fingers
were bleeding. “The sky tearing open. All these things flying out.” She
made fluttery gestures with her hands. “A big mouth full of screaming
teeth. It wants to eat the world. Darkness. All the worms and the people
tearing up—”
    “Juno.” Ropé reached into his pocket and removed a leather case.
“Perhaps we could talk about this another time.” The case opened like a
book, with a puff of cold vapour. Inside there was a device that
resembled the grip and trigger of a pistol, but instead of a breech and
barrel there was a glass tube ending in a micropore mesh. The case had a
small nest of ampoules next to the device, and Ropé loaded one into the
tube.
    She came to her feet in a rush, the chair leg shivering in her hands. “I
don’t need that.”
    “Juno, love.” He concentrated on the words to make them utterly kind,
totally without any accusation or venom. “I don’t want you to be upset.
I care about you too much for that. It makes me sad to see you like
this.”
    “Heywood, you do believe me, don’t you?” The chair leg drooped. “I can
see these things, sometimes in the day now, not just in dreams.” Her
eyes unfocussed. She was exploring the thought. “Mirrors. I’m going to
be killed by mirrors.”
    “Juno, you’re a star, and stars are immortal. They can’t be killed by
anything.”
    She looked at him again, this time clear-eyed. “Okay. Put that away and
I’ll come out.”
    He smiled, guiding the device back to his pocket. “Look, I’m putting it
away.”
    Juno dropped the chair leg and came to him for a hug. “I’m sorry. I
don’t mean to be any trouble—”
    “I know,” he said in a fatherly voice. When she had both hands around
him, Ropé grabbed her pigtails and wrenched her head backward. She
started to scream, but the noise died in her throat as the injector
device chugged where it touched her jugular. A shot of electric blue
fluid vanished into her bloodstream and Juno staggered back a step, her
eyes hazing.
    Ropé spat and put the device away. “The show must go on,” he told her.
    “Yes,” she said thickly, her doll-like face brightening. “Oh. Yes.”
     
    Inside the Hyperdome it was blood-warm and moist with the exhalations of
a capacity crowd. Juno Qwan’s star was still climbing and with a string
of international hits and another album on the way, the petite Chinese
singer had all the hallmarks of becoming a cross-genre smash. The music
wasn’t Fixx’s cup of tea, though. It lacked soul by his lights, it
seemed bereft of meaning; but he was clearly in the minority tonight.
The sanctioned operative moved through the outer edges of the crowd as
“Locker Room Heart” belted out across the stadium. The lights went down
and came back again in flashes of colour, spinning strobe wheels and
trailer spots sweeping the crowd like searchlights over a writhing human
sea. From above, concealed in the steel rafters of the ’dome, misting
nozzles cast a fine, cool haze over the throng. The towering holos of
Juno glittered in the vapour, the giant doppelgangers following her
every move.
    Fixx saw her up on the stage, strutting and moving with her dancers,
faking sexual positions with the backing vocalists. The band segued into
“Bitch Queen” and “The Future is Now” before she threw off the
schoolgirl outfit and changed tack. The atmosphere became sultry and
intimate with a cover of “When the Night Comes”, calming the crowd. Fixx
moved slowly and carefully through the ranks of Juno’s fans, letting the
Brownian motion of their enrapt swaying push him ever closer to the
rails of the mojo barrier surrounding the stage.
    He crossed into the main mass of people and without warning his path