On the seventh day of the New Era - exactly one week after his birthday - Li Yang witnessed a miracle upon waking up.
He had slept very well, and slept in late. Having a full belly and a hiber bed to sleep on proved to be a very sleep-inducing combination. That morning, he opened his eyes when it was already nearing noon, although his room was still in semi-darkness. Li Yang kept the curtains on all the windows tightly drawn at all times. He didn't want rooftop gunmen taking potshots at him because they'd spotted him through the window.
As he lay there, staring at the dim ceiling, the ceiling light suddenly came into life. It shone for just a couple of seconds. Then there was a loud pop, and the light went out.
Li Yang got up and examined the light switch by the door. He had left it on! He switched it off and on a few times, but nothing happened. The light bulb was dead.
He got dressed and spent the next few minutes going into all the rooms in the apartment, using the keys he'd got from the cops that had come to tell him Rose Fogerty was dead. He'd decided that he'd keep the landlady's keys. He was the only tenant left in the apartment. No one could accuse him of anything.
Li Yang switched on the ceiling light in every room in the apartment. The result was always the same: a couple of seconds of light followed by a pop as another light bulb went dead.
He took a fresh pail of water from the bathtub in the communal bathroom, and returned to his room to make himself some food. But the stink in the bathroom had killed his appetite. He had defecated into the toilet there the previous day forgetting that there's no water in the toilet tank.
After a short hesitation, he'd poured some water into the tank and flushed the toilet. But one small turd persisted in remaining afloat on the surface, and after he'd wasted another tankful of water he just put down the lid on it. The lid didn't fit the seat too well, so the smell from the toilet bowl spread.
He wondered why his shit stank so badly. Had he been poisoned by his contact with the cube? The documentation he'd read didn't mention that possibility, and it was pretty thorough. So thorough that he knew he'd missed a lot of things even though he'd read everything on the scroll.
But before he could reach for the scroll to scan it for mentions of poison and illness, he realized why his shit stank. He was eating a lot of protein. He hadn't eaten that much meat and eggs ever before. He had been pigging out full time on all the stolen food, since it was bound to go bad anyway without refrigeration.
He had stopped thinking about it and was just relaxing on the bed next to the silvery mat when he heard something move above his head.
He stared at the ceiling: he was sure the sound had come from the floor above. Then he heard it again, a soft clatter as if someone had dropped something on the floor.
The thing was, the floor above was unoccupied. Li Yang's building was a relict of another era. It should have been torn down a long time ago. A leaking roof and cracked water pipes had made the upper two floors unsuitable for habitation. Things were so bad up there that the city building inspector had sadly refused the bribe offered by the building's owner, and declared the top two floors off limits for tenants.
But there was someone up there, Li Yang could hear it. Someone in the apartment, the room immediately above his own.
He got up and got the revolver from under the bed mattress. It still had only three cartridges in the drum. Li Yang spun it until the first of the three cartridges was lined up with the barrel. Holding the gun in his hand, he opened the front door and peeked out into the staircase.
He stood motionless in the open doorway for a couple of minutes, listening hard. Nothing and no one was moving on the staircase.
He quickly went back to his room and put on a an extra pair of socks, sprinkling their soles with water so that they wouldn't slide. Then he crept out of the apartment and up the staircase to the floor above.
There was an official tape strung across the top of the stairs. Black letters on a bright yellow background repeated the message: Do Not Cross. Do Not Cross. Do Not Cross.
Li Yang bent his back and slipped under the tape. He stepped onto the landing and stood still, listening, the gun's butt getting warm in his hand. Nothing stirred, nothing moved.
He stepped softly across the landing and into the hallway that led to two apartments. The one on the left was directly above his own. He put his ear to the door and immediately thought he'd heard something. But it was followed by total silence, dead silence that dragged out every second into ten.
He put his hand on the door handle. The round metal knob was very cold. But it warmed quickly under his fingers, and it awakened an instinct: he tried to turn it.
It turned. The door opened a crack. It had been left unlocked.
He stood still, listening. More silence. He pushed the door open wider with the muzzle of his gun and looked inside.
The hallway was an exact copy of the hallway in his apartment, with doors leading to rooms on both sides. The second door on the left led to the room above his own.
It was the only door that was open, throwing a shaft of pale light over the hallway runner.
Li Yang crept into the dark hallway. His shoeless feet were silent on the threadbare hallway runner. He held his half-raised gun in both hands. his left hand cupping the butt. His thumb was on the hammer of the revolver.
A sound made him freeze just a couple of steps from the open doorway.
It was the sound of a sob.
He crept forward until his body was next to the open doorway. Then he slid an eye and the barrel of his gun around the door jamb.
Charlene Lee was sitting on a bed that was directly above Li Yang's bed. She sat sideways to him, and she was holding her face in her hands. A couple of rings on her fingers caught the light, and she was dressed in what looked like a very expensive fur coat. She didn't look as if she could have anything to cry about.
But she was crying, there was no doubt about it. As Li Yang looked on, her shoulders shook and another sob escaped through her hands.
He dropped the gun to his side. After a short hesitation, he flipped the safety to on, and put the gun into his left pant pocket. The butt stuck out, but maybe that wasn't bad. He stepped into the room and said:
"Charlene."
She screamed before she looked at him. She recognized him right away, even though he'd grimaced horribly at the scream.
"Li Yang!"
"Yes. It's me. I heard you moving around from downstairs. What are you doing here, Charlene? And why are you crying?"
It was the wrong thing to say: she started sobbing again. Li Yang waited for a dozen heartbeats. Then he said:
"Charlene. Let's go downstairs. We shouldn't be up here."
She stopped sobbing and said:
"I can't go downstairs. I owe Rose last month's rent. I promised I'd pay for both December and January right at the beginning of the year. I don't have the money. I don't have almost any money! And Harper is in jail."
"What?"
"It's... It's a long story. And complicated."
"I'll be glad to listen."
She glanced at him suspiciously. Then she said:
"When the storm broke, we were visiting Harper's friend. So we stayed there. And then trouble started and when it went on and on and there was no electricity we, we... It looked safe enough outside in spite of the shooting, there was a lot of people were on the street, many going home loaded with stuff. So we went along to pick up something, we were getting short of food. And Harper and his friend got caught. The cops arrived soon after we'd gone into this store. We didn't hear them coming, they were on bicycles. They arrested Harper and they arrested Bobby, his friend. I was so lucky. They ran in right past me. Maybe they didn't grab me because I wasn't carrying anything. I just had this coat on and some jewelry and that was it."
"It's a very nice coat."
"You like it?"
"Yes. It looks very expensive."
"It's not. It's fake fur. But it ain't inexpensive either."
"I've got good news for you, Charlene."
"What? Fuck! Tell me. I really can use some good news."
"I'm sorry. I should have said I have both good news and bad news."
"I knew it. I knew it! Give me the bad news first, asshole."
"Miz Fogerty is dead. The landlady. She's dead. So she won't be after you for the rent. That's the good news."
"Is this really true? You're not fucking me around?"
"It's gospel truth," said Li Yang, purposefully using the phrase he'd sometimes heard Harper Lee use. He added:
"Let's go downstairs. You don't need to stay here. Don't worry, I'll do my best to protect you."
Charlene Lee looked at him sharply. She seemed to make her mind up about something.
"Okay," she said, getting up. "Can you help me out? I've got some stuff under the bed."
She looked at him and noticed the small revolver's butt sticking out of his pants pocket. She said:
"Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?"
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