Bitter Pill

  Bill Blume

  Time Killer Publishing

  Copyright © 2014, 2024 by Bill Blume

  All rights reserved.

  Second Edition

  No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  “Bitter Pill” was originally published by Imagine That! Studios as part of its “Tales from the Archives” series. Any references to the “Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences” have been removed for this edition.

  Contents

  Bitter Pill

  Also by Bill Blume

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Bitter Pill

  April 1895

  Hong Kong

  I paint mortality.

  The dagger draws shades of red from my victim’s flesh, and my art flows across the floor or ground for its canvas.

  Death is a beautiful release.

  Immortality… That is the bitter pill.

  Friday, April 26, 1895

  Mountains of Tai Po, north of Hong Kong

  I’m chasing my shadow through the mountain’s caverns.

  “Yu, wait!” Frederick is falling behind. The artificial light from his torch, aimed at my back, is the only light we brought with us. Nothing looks familiar, not even my silhouette distorted against the rocky walls and floor.

  I can’t wait for him. He needs to move faster. Chung-Li is getting away, ahead of us, into the spider web of the mountain’s ancient passages.

  Chung-Li changed. I saw it, and I still don’t believe it.

  My throat is dry. An ache is building beneath my skull, a storm of cold truth colliding with hot denial. Sweat coats me like melted ice. Even as my hand grabs the wall to steady my body, I push forward. I can’t stop.

  Chung-Li holds the secrets I need. I don’t even know how to force the truth from him. Death is my weapon, but he cannot die.

  Frederick’s shouts grow more desperate as he falls further behind. Then his light exposes my prey, the beam reflecting off tiny, red eyes. The white ball of fur is topped with long ears and its large paws propel him back out of the light.

  My scream, raw and desperate, terrifies me. I’ve never granted fear any time within my 23 years of life, but if that rabbit that was once a man gets away from me, then my life will be finished, because my life will never end.

  Earlier that same day

  An undetermined location above mainland China

  Papa knew how to kill. That’s what brought him to Hong Kong in 1867.

  Knowing how to kill granted me passage to London a decade ago, after he died.

  Now, I’m flying back to my personal hell. My pale-skinned handler Shilling said this assignment came straight from Doctor Sound. His name’s not Shilling, of course. I’ve no need for his real name. I call the foul-mouthed fool Shilling because he gives me money. In return, I kill people who become inconvenient. When Shilling told me the Imperialists wanted me to go to Hong Kong, I demanded twice my usual fee.

  I should have asked for more.

  I’ve killed 126 people, all but one for pay. None of them made me cry, nor denied me sleep. The first thing I ever killed was an ox. I held the knife, and Papa held my hand. Blood gushed from its throat and coated my forearm. Papa kissed the center of my forehead and wiped the tears from my eyes with the cuff of his sleeve. He painted my lips red with the beast’s blood and said I was now a woman.

  Killing never troubles me, but four straight days on board a military zeppelin may have chipped at my sanity a bit. I’ve started pacing in this dark cabin like a tiny koi swimming laps in its bowl.

  The clouds have dropped to hug this flying whale. I cannot see green grass or red rocks. Somehow, not seeing the ground makes me even more fearful that this behemoth will fall.

  An unnatural ache throbs within my mind, drifting against my will to childhood memories in Hong Kong. The closer this ship comes to the place of my birth, the worse it gets.

  My hands need something to do. Never has my handler given me an assignment without at least a name or title of my intended. I’m tempted to make Shilling my 127th kill, no fee required.

  The airship reaches Hong Kong more than an hour after it was supposed to.

  Docking atop the police tower in downtown, I see a city I do not recognize. Ten years have passed, and the dark nights have fled this place. Electricity flows like a river of light through every street. People walk and play at an hour when they would have once slept.

  A horse-drawn carriage pulls up to the front steps of the police station and reminds me of my new home in London. The old man on the right horse wears goggles with yellow lenses. They help him see better in the dark.

  I wish his mechanical beasts also wore something to hide their large, copper eyes. They never blink. They remain fixed on a life they can no longer discern as one day followed by another. What does time mean to a machine that can be turned on or off at its master’s whim?

  In London, they describe these horses as “improved.” Their legs are a mockery of life made from gears and metal plates. These economical alternatives require neither food nor love, only a mechanic. Hundreds of these cabs trot along London’s streets, albeit with the metal parts covered in fake coats of hair, but they are still new here with the mechanics exposed.

  I hope this is not my ride, but then the carriage door swings open. A man a few years older than me wearing a top hat hangs out like a carnival barker without a circus. His long blond hair spills down in his face, partially obscuring his eyes. “Ah, you must be the Jade Dagger.”

  I glare at him. “You are late.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Oh, one of those types. Come along.” He disappears back into the carriage and leaves the door open for me to climb in.

  The carriage carries a third passenger, an open bottle of mijiu. The scent of cheap, rice wine wafts from the back of the carriage where the Englishman lounges. I sit across from him.

  He pounds the ceiling with the top of his golden-tipped cane. “Take us to Doctor Manson’s house!” When the carriage doesn’t move, he sticks his head out the window and shouts the request again, this time speaking it in exaggerated Mandarin.

  The carriage jerks forward. The synchronized clip clop of the horses discomforts me almost as much as this smiling fool. He reeks of weakness, falling far short of my expectations. I refuse to look at him, staring out at a street I once knew.

  “So,” he says, “I hope you’re eager for a good hunt.”

  “Just tell me who I’m here to kill.”

  “Well, I’ll be sure to let you know if I find someone who requires killing.”

  The way he says this makes me realize why Shilling was vague. I’ve not been sent here to paint mortality. They are paying me to accompany this fool through a place I hate.

  “I’m Frederick Talbot, a hired hand in the dark in His Majesty’s Service, same as you.”

  I take in his suit which doesn’t quite fit, and wonder if its original owner is still alive. He is not the gentleman he pretends to be, and he believes that cleverness.

  “We are not the same.”

  Frederick laughs and points at me with his cane. “Well, you have some much lovelier parts. I’ll not argue that.”

  I might have to sleep with this man. While I do prefer the men of the West, I can’t say that I find Frederick all that enticing. When I started killing, I was young enough to pass for a boy. These days, my body betrays me, but I’ve learned to use it to my advantage. I’ve also accepted the value of laying there and doing nothing. I’d rather let him think me a bad lay than waste my energy fending off his inelegant efforts to court me.

  “You will call me Yu or Miss Sharpe. If you do not, I will find a mass grave and add you to its population.”

  “You are a witty thing.” He sprawls across the back seat and closes his eyes.

  “Wake me when we get there,” he says and then quickly sits up to look at me and add, “Miss Sharpe.”

  I decide to watch for any mass graves, but the familiar outline of Hong Kong stirs memories I prefer left beneath the dust of time. The unwelcome company in the carriage makes it all too easy to surrender to the stream of past pains that threaten to destroy me.

  1883

  Hong Kong

  My mother cries. She does not think I hear, but being a child does not make me deaf.

  “No man will want her.”

  Papa laughs. “You want her weak?” Even after more than a decade in Hong Kong, he doesn’t understand these people.

  He is teaching me to hunt. Today, I tracked a fox through the forests. Father pierced its heart with an arrow. I am eager to learn the bow and arrow, too.

  A boy laughed at me on the street this morning. He called me a dog without fur, because my face was dirty. I broke his nose.

  While Papa and I were gone, the boy’s father came to our house and complained. Mother cries. Papa laughs.

  “She taught the boy a lesson.” Papa is cleaning his gun. He’s going to show me how to care for guns, too. “Even the noisiest monkey knows to shut its maw if it can’t win a fight.”

  I giggle into the palm of my hand, since I’m supposed to be asleep.

  “Our daughter will never find a husband.” Mother reminds me of the boy. She will plea, but she doesn’t know how to give her words any strength. This place has taught her to serve and suffer. “She will starve to death.”

  I think father knows he will die young. Mother would have starved without him. She will die beside him. I will never go hungry, because he is showing me how to survive.

  1895

  Doctor Manson’s House

  Save for the heat, which does nothing to ease my headache, Doctor Manson’s home almost convinces me I am back in London. His office is four walls of books and windows.

  Frederick and I sit across from our host.

  The doctor is a short man, a detail emphasized as he sits behind his rather large, ornate desk of carved black wood. He has better sense than Frederick and is not wearing some absurd coat or tie, just a dress shirt with black pants and a paisley vest. He is sweating worse than Frederick, though. He has a pronounced stomach.

  “We still don’t know how they found out,” he says.

  “You mean the leaders of the insurrection.” I notice Frederick’s ill manners improve dramatically for the elder physician. “What are they calling this skirmish?”

  The doctor sits up. “They are trying not to call it anything. More than five hundred villagers to the north were killed during six days of conflict. Seems even the other side prefers to dust this one under the rug, especially since none on our side were killed.”

  Frederick grunts his disappointment.

  “You’d think these people would be grateful for our presence. Cleaner running water, electricity, even law and order.”

  The older gentleman laughs at Frederick’s observation. “I believe many of them are, but the expansion of our presence into the Northern territories of Hong Kong was not what provoked the conflict, not exactly.”

  I consider telling the scientist he is a fool to believe that. These Imperialists are convinced their campaign is driven by Divine Powers and not greed.

  “What started it then?” Frederick asks.

  The doctor clears his throat and stands to close the shutters of his windows. Frederick and I both eye the thin, dark brown packet on his desk which bares the wax seal of Hong Kong’s governor and contains the official orders for whatever our true mission here might be. The doctor has not opened it. Its contents are not meant for his eyes with their delicate morals. He walks around to the front of his desk to be closer to us and lowers his voice.

  “You both should understand that this is the first time I’ve voiced this matter with anyone other than the governor since I became involved.”

  I notice the doctor’s gaze hesitates more with me. I say nothing. He retreats from my gaze and stuffs tobacco into the bowl of his smoking pipe.

  “We believe the leaders of this uprising discovered the real reason we’ve extended our lease with China for this area. They learned what we’ve been looking for. ” Doctor Manson’s hands shake as he lights his pipe. “Immortality.”

  While I manage to keep my own opinions concealed, Frederick’s skeptical laughter shatters the tension Manson is attempting to conjure as if he were a magician working with the blackest of art. “Immortality. Are you having a lark at our expense, old man?”

  “In the past century, we’ve made major advancements with technology. We have harnessed steam to power ships. Our vessels now seek the darkest depths of the ocean. Our most brilliant minds have even captured lightning in the proverbial bottle, illuminating our cities and pushing back the night. We have conquered the skies with our airships. How long before we build a vessel that voyages into the Heavens themselves?” Manson leans closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Technology has elevated man closer to the Gods than we have ever been.” He holds up a finger to stop any reply. “Only our mortality limits us, and that Mr. Talbot and Miss Sharpe, is one thing our technology has proven unable to overcome.”

  The doctor pulls back now and sits on the edge of his desk. “Imagine if our most brilliant minds were able to live for hundreds of years instead of decades. Think of the advancements!”

  “Forgive me,” Frederick says with an impatient glance towards our unopened orders, “but if you’re looking for longer life, then I’m not certain why you would look here. The Black Plague still kills people here by the thousands.”

  I know Frederick is correct. Anyone who has lived here knows the signs. I have seen the swelling beneath people’s arms and about their groins. I spared the life of the man who killed my Papa, because I saw the marks of his illness. I chose to let him suffer.

  The doctor, who sees only a pretty young lady and not the skilled killer I am, looks to me and smiles. “Come, Miss Sharpe, surely you know of what I speak, do you not?”

  I nod, but I make no effort to hide my low opinion of these fairy tales. “The Pill of Immortality.”

  “Precisely! This country’s legends speak of men and women achieving enlightenment and eternal life, beings so connected with the very essence of nature that they could alter their form from man to beast or child to adult.” Doctor Manson points to a painting of the Eight Immortals that hangs over his cold and empty fireplace. “We’ve even found evidence that some of these immortals actually existed, documentation that suggests they are more than simple fantasies wrapped in morality tales.”

  He walks over to the painting and stares at it.

  “There are so many native legends regarding immortality. One tells us of a tree hanging above an abyss with a rare, spiritual fruit which one need only eat. Another legend speaks of a mountain that these immortals carved up, forming a vast network of caves, trying to find a pearl buried within. We believe this mountain is north of Hong Kong, and that they hid the key to immortality, whatever form this key might take, within its caverns.”

  Frederick leans back into his chair with a bored look on his face. “And you actually believe you will find this whimsy?”

  I see the doctor’s eyes shift to the side, appearing embarrassed in the face of Western skepticism.

  Moments later, we exchange our farewells with Doctor Manson and go to our carriage. This time, despite the odor of alcohol, I join Frederick on his side. I watch as he opens our instructions.

  Frederick reads them aloud. “The man circled in the photograph was seen in the company of the insurrection’s leaders on more than one occasion. Find this man, and take him alive.”

  He hands me the picture, and a black circle brings my eyes to a man with long black hair, a slender goatee and large teeth.

  “I don’t suppose you recognize him?” Frederick asks.

  Something stirs within my mind, somehow easing my headache a bit. Is there something to this man’s face? I find my thoughts drawn back to the painting of the Eight Immortals above the doctor’s fireplace. I force myself to focus on the photograph, but no name or memory connects with the man in it. I shake my head in defeat. “I take it you wish to start our search tonight?”

  “You really want to traipse through this hellhole in the heat at midday?”

  My discomfort with Hong Kong has nothing to do with the heat, but I choose not to argue. I am eager to finish this task and return to London.

  “Very well then, Miss Sharpe—oh expert in the local ways—where shall we begin?”

  I hand the photograph back to Frederick. “Where you will always find men at night.”

  1885

  Hong Kong

  I see the black smoke from five blocks away.

  I am five blocks from home.

  A wagon screams down the road, a man next to the driver rings a bell warning all to get out of its path, but I do not move. They carry a large barrel on the back with hoses running from it. Two passengers cling to the top of the barrel as the wagon swerves to avoid me. They are part of the local fire brigade.

  I already know they are wasting their time.

  There’s a dead rabbit in my hands. I killed it while I was hunting this morning. I ran home to show it to my father. My mother would have been furious, and my smile would have taunted her the entire time she cooked it for our dinner.

  I will have to cook it myself, though.

  Home is no longer there.

  1895

 

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