IA: Alternate Realities (Part 1)
written for kateriya as part of meme way way way back in 2008. explicit ming/yan. 'cept not in this chapter. lalala.
Alternate Realities (Part 1)
by omi
Yan stood in the middle of his new living room, his worldly possessions in a bag and a box sitting at his feet.
It was a standard issue one bedroom apartment complete with fake pine table from Ikea, butter yellow sofa (ditto), a display cabinet that matched a glass coffee table (which said that at least someone out there in Police Administration cared) but still had all the plastic cover stuff on (which said, equally loudly, that no one else did).
It even had white curtains hanging at the windows, the kind you could practically look through, that did eff-all for privacy. But it did, Yan privately admitted, look pretty just hanging there.
He walked over to them, fumbled at them a little and swore up and down in his mind that he was swapping them for blinds first thing tomorrow morning once the shops open, until he finally found the gap between. The view, such as it was, was just another identical apartment block. It was quiet. No half drugged out junkies at the staircase landings, no screaming kids, arguing couples or blaring tv sets. No murder. No mayhem. Just another quiet police dormitory apartment block. The screaming and wife-battering and murders were probably happening behind closed doors anyway. A lot more civilized that way, don’t you know?
Yan wondered if he could get a decent game of mahjong going. Or maybe a regular poker night, with cigars. Six blocks of insomniac police officers, there were bound to be a couple who'd want to come out and play.
He sank into the sofa, shifted as something poked him in the rear and pulled the set of house keys out of his back pocket. He'd just spent the last hour, following the police housing officer around the place, signing for keys, for maintenance, for the washing machine and rice cooker and bed and desk and things that filled up a good three pages that had to be initialed item by item. Didn't recall signing for toilet paper, through. That probably came free. A gift from the government. So kind of them, you don't say.
He stared at the room. So this is home.
You don't say.
Yan fled from the incipient domestication and new furniture smell and went shopping for groceries. (2 cartons of instant noodles, a 6-pack of beer and a couple of cans of processed meats and pickled vegetables that came from, of all places, Argentina, and a horse racing rag. That was pure reflex, a undercover ops habit for blending in with the masses from the bad old days).
But there was only so much you could do while carting around three bags of groceries, and after getting chased away by the old men outside the shop playing Chinese chess for interrupting too much, Yan reluctantly made his way back again.
Clearing the groceries took thirty seconds. He sat in his new living room, and leafed through the racing magazine. It came with a poster of the next great Hong Kong hope, a two-year old mare called ‘Joanna’. Yan rather liked the look of her, so he stuck the poster up on the wall. Made it looked more cosy and home-liked, he fancied.
And then there was nothing left to do.
So he called Wong-sir.
“I’m bored,” said Yan without preamble, lying flat on his sofa, staring at the ceiling. Two cracks and a spider web, but no sign of said spider.
Wong-sir said something pithy that was illegal in at least four Asian countries and hung up.
Yan laughed really hard for a while, and then grabbed his keys and headed out the door again.
He took off for Mongkok, to this audio equipment shop he used to 'frequent' way back in his protection-racket-undercover days.
He pushed the old door open, the bell jangling. The old boss wasn't there, just some guy, squatting in front of the speakers, who turned at the noise.
Lean. Ambitious. Sharp eyes. Sharper features. That was Yan's first impression. Guy belonged in a suit, in a big office, eating little businesses for breakfast and big ones for supper. Then he smiled, and Yan changed his opinion. The man was obviously born to be in sales. A smile like that could get anyone happy and willing to reach for their wallets and part with some serious cash. Yan felt the first prickle of unease, and then he remembered his pay advance and relaxed.
'Can I help you?' The guy asked.
Yan scratched at his neck, 'I'm looking for a sub-woofer.'
'Ah,' The guy's eyes brightened, and he leaned back on his haunches. 'What kind of system do you have?' Yan pulled up a stool, and they were off on a discussion on the serious business of quality sound which sparked into a mini-argument between brands and then segued into a comparison of dream set-ups.
An album later, Yan had been persuaded into a pretty Polks sub-woofer. He lugged it half-way up the steps to his old place, a dingy room off Sham Shui Po, before he remembered he didn't live there anymore. He took the train, the sub-woofer box between his legs, back to the Police Dormitories, a thin man in a leather jacket with haunted eyes.
Monday morning, 7am, his bedroom, and a man that Yan really didn't want to wake up to.
'Go away,' groaned Yan into his pillow.
'Wake up,' Wong-sir nudged him in the back with the tip of his shoe'd foot. 'I didn't call in five years worth of favours to get you into the hottest tactical team just so you can oversleep and be late for your first day back on the force.' He put his considerable weight behind his foot, and dug between Yan's third and fourth rib.
'Auurgh,' Yan rolled away from the offending shoe, and throw back the cover. 'Fuck,' he ran his hands through his hair. 'How did you get in anyway? Isn't this breaking and entering or have things changed that much since I was undercover?'
'Favours, boy, favours,' said Wong-sir beatifically. 'Up and at them, laddie, the Hong Kong Police Force is waiting for its newest Inspector.'
Yan winced a little.
Wong-sir looked at him. 'You survived 11 years undercover; you can survive the force.'
A corner of Yan's mouth quirked up. 'Yeah, piece of cake.'
'Exactly,' Wong-sir relaxed and slapped him on the arse. 'Hurry up. I gotta get me some coffee.'
Yan stood at the door, just taking everything in. Wong-sir had deposited him at his new department after a car ride (with a stop for coffee brewed blacker than tar) that was more a intensive debrief/orientation of the way the winds were blowing back at HQ.
'-- the triads are shaking things up a lot more these days, and the old connections are all getting broken, new ties forming. The higher-ups are concerned that the year end report isn't gonna look so good this year, the old guard are concerned cause all their old contacts are turning up chopped up in bags scattered in the city, or in the bay, and the up and coming SIs are all eye-ing it like dogs with a piece of rotting meat.
'I'll be honest, this tactical team is a make or break deal. If the tactical team delivers, if you deliver, then you're in. Senior inspector, permanent position at HQ, recognition of your service years undercover, and your record swept under the carpet and no one to make a big deal of the fact you haven't put in your time at HQ saluting and kissing ass.
'The rest of the new team are in the same boat, more or less. Ambitious guys, with nothing to lose. So watch yourself, and for godssakes, don't screw up.'
Yeah, don't screw up. In a office that is all glass and steel and people bustling around in sharp suits that was literally a universe away from the seedy alleys peopled with drug addicts and prostitutes and gangsters that he came from.
He took a final look around the department from under lidded eyes, pulled his hands from his pockets, walked over to the last, largest, glass enclosure and rapped on the door. The door plate rattled a little against the glass.
Senior Inspector Lau Kin Ming
Alternate Realities (Part 1)
by omi
Yan stood in the middle of his new living room, his worldly possessions in a bag and a box sitting at his feet.
It was a standard issue one bedroom apartment complete with fake pine table from Ikea, butter yellow sofa (ditto), a display cabinet that matched a glass coffee table (which said that at least someone out there in Police Administration cared) but still had all the plastic cover stuff on (which said, equally loudly, that no one else did).
It even had white curtains hanging at the windows, the kind you could practically look through, that did eff-all for privacy. But it did, Yan privately admitted, look pretty just hanging there.
He walked over to them, fumbled at them a little and swore up and down in his mind that he was swapping them for blinds first thing tomorrow morning once the shops open, until he finally found the gap between. The view, such as it was, was just another identical apartment block. It was quiet. No half drugged out junkies at the staircase landings, no screaming kids, arguing couples or blaring tv sets. No murder. No mayhem. Just another quiet police dormitory apartment block. The screaming and wife-battering and murders were probably happening behind closed doors anyway. A lot more civilized that way, don’t you know?
Yan wondered if he could get a decent game of mahjong going. Or maybe a regular poker night, with cigars. Six blocks of insomniac police officers, there were bound to be a couple who'd want to come out and play.
He sank into the sofa, shifted as something poked him in the rear and pulled the set of house keys out of his back pocket. He'd just spent the last hour, following the police housing officer around the place, signing for keys, for maintenance, for the washing machine and rice cooker and bed and desk and things that filled up a good three pages that had to be initialed item by item. Didn't recall signing for toilet paper, through. That probably came free. A gift from the government. So kind of them, you don't say.
He stared at the room. So this is home.
You don't say.
Yan fled from the incipient domestication and new furniture smell and went shopping for groceries. (2 cartons of instant noodles, a 6-pack of beer and a couple of cans of processed meats and pickled vegetables that came from, of all places, Argentina, and a horse racing rag. That was pure reflex, a undercover ops habit for blending in with the masses from the bad old days).
But there was only so much you could do while carting around three bags of groceries, and after getting chased away by the old men outside the shop playing Chinese chess for interrupting too much, Yan reluctantly made his way back again.
Clearing the groceries took thirty seconds. He sat in his new living room, and leafed through the racing magazine. It came with a poster of the next great Hong Kong hope, a two-year old mare called ‘Joanna’. Yan rather liked the look of her, so he stuck the poster up on the wall. Made it looked more cosy and home-liked, he fancied.
And then there was nothing left to do.
So he called Wong-sir.
“I’m bored,” said Yan without preamble, lying flat on his sofa, staring at the ceiling. Two cracks and a spider web, but no sign of said spider.
Wong-sir said something pithy that was illegal in at least four Asian countries and hung up.
Yan laughed really hard for a while, and then grabbed his keys and headed out the door again.
He took off for Mongkok, to this audio equipment shop he used to 'frequent' way back in his protection-racket-undercover days.
He pushed the old door open, the bell jangling. The old boss wasn't there, just some guy, squatting in front of the speakers, who turned at the noise.
Lean. Ambitious. Sharp eyes. Sharper features. That was Yan's first impression. Guy belonged in a suit, in a big office, eating little businesses for breakfast and big ones for supper. Then he smiled, and Yan changed his opinion. The man was obviously born to be in sales. A smile like that could get anyone happy and willing to reach for their wallets and part with some serious cash. Yan felt the first prickle of unease, and then he remembered his pay advance and relaxed.
'Can I help you?' The guy asked.
Yan scratched at his neck, 'I'm looking for a sub-woofer.'
'Ah,' The guy's eyes brightened, and he leaned back on his haunches. 'What kind of system do you have?' Yan pulled up a stool, and they were off on a discussion on the serious business of quality sound which sparked into a mini-argument between brands and then segued into a comparison of dream set-ups.
An album later, Yan had been persuaded into a pretty Polks sub-woofer. He lugged it half-way up the steps to his old place, a dingy room off Sham Shui Po, before he remembered he didn't live there anymore. He took the train, the sub-woofer box between his legs, back to the Police Dormitories, a thin man in a leather jacket with haunted eyes.
Monday morning, 7am, his bedroom, and a man that Yan really didn't want to wake up to.
'Go away,' groaned Yan into his pillow.
'Wake up,' Wong-sir nudged him in the back with the tip of his shoe'd foot. 'I didn't call in five years worth of favours to get you into the hottest tactical team just so you can oversleep and be late for your first day back on the force.' He put his considerable weight behind his foot, and dug between Yan's third and fourth rib.
'Auurgh,' Yan rolled away from the offending shoe, and throw back the cover. 'Fuck,' he ran his hands through his hair. 'How did you get in anyway? Isn't this breaking and entering or have things changed that much since I was undercover?'
'Favours, boy, favours,' said Wong-sir beatifically. 'Up and at them, laddie, the Hong Kong Police Force is waiting for its newest Inspector.'
Yan winced a little.
Wong-sir looked at him. 'You survived 11 years undercover; you can survive the force.'
A corner of Yan's mouth quirked up. 'Yeah, piece of cake.'
'Exactly,' Wong-sir relaxed and slapped him on the arse. 'Hurry up. I gotta get me some coffee.'
Yan stood at the door, just taking everything in. Wong-sir had deposited him at his new department after a car ride (with a stop for coffee brewed blacker than tar) that was more a intensive debrief/orientation of the way the winds were blowing back at HQ.
'-- the triads are shaking things up a lot more these days, and the old connections are all getting broken, new ties forming. The higher-ups are concerned that the year end report isn't gonna look so good this year, the old guard are concerned cause all their old contacts are turning up chopped up in bags scattered in the city, or in the bay, and the up and coming SIs are all eye-ing it like dogs with a piece of rotting meat.
'I'll be honest, this tactical team is a make or break deal. If the tactical team delivers, if you deliver, then you're in. Senior inspector, permanent position at HQ, recognition of your service years undercover, and your record swept under the carpet and no one to make a big deal of the fact you haven't put in your time at HQ saluting and kissing ass.
'The rest of the new team are in the same boat, more or less. Ambitious guys, with nothing to lose. So watch yourself, and for godssakes, don't screw up.'
Yeah, don't screw up. In a office that is all glass and steel and people bustling around in sharp suits that was literally a universe away from the seedy alleys peopled with drug addicts and prostitutes and gangsters that he came from.
He took a final look around the department from under lidded eyes, pulled his hands from his pockets, walked over to the last, largest, glass enclosure and rapped on the door. The door plate rattled a little against the glass.
Senior Inspector Lau Kin Ming