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Ace came back to consciousness slowly, breath coming hot through her gag. Her throat burnt, and her muscles ached. She tried tugging her wrists apart, and then her ankles, but, of course, the effort was wasted. Tears pricked at the edge of her eyes, and she shook her head sharply to dispel them. She tried pawing at the edge of the chair with her heel, but that too was useless.
Her thirst was beginning to give her a headache.
She wondered how long she was going to be left here for. If her past experiences were anything, it was just as she was on the brink of passing out that she’d finally be attended to.
Physical games she could deal with, but she couldn’t stand mind games.
Ace tried to count the minutes, then the hours, but time was slipping away from her, and the pain in her head was slowly increasing. She tried getting her hands out of the ropes again, chafing the skin painfully, but short of breaking most of the bones there was nothing she could do. If only her bag hadn't been taken from her, and she'd had some nitroglycerine!
Ace was just starting to doze off again when she heard something. Sitting up slightly, she strained her ears, hearing the occasional sound, too faint and irregular to make out a pattern, or determine its cause. She set her jaw, but despite this she began to quiver. Perhaps this was intentional. More mind games.
The noises came closer over the course of several minutes. Ace couldn’t keep staying on edge like this; she felt half insane, trying to hear something that might not even be real. But finally the handle to the room rattled, and then came the sound of keys in a lock. Ace tensed, but the figure who entered was clearly not him.
It was a woman in bloomers, a sage-green jacket wrapped around her. She stared at Ace, and though she couldn't see her expression, Ace thought she seemed disappointed. She shook her head and turned to shut the door, then came over, drawing a two-barrelled derringer from her coat.
She studied Ace for a moment, then reached forwards to untie the back of her gag, holding out the gun. “Who are you?” Her accent was Chinese, which matched her features, but not fully so - and not American. “Are you working with him?” English, perhaps?
“Does it look like I am?” asked Ace, shaking her wrists. The woman looked at them for a moment. “And that gun’s not cocked. If you’re hoping to shoot me, you’ll get nowhere. Unless you’re trying to bluff me?”
The woman sighed and put the gun away, pulling out a knife and getting to work on Ace’s bonds. “Are there other prisoners down here?”
“No,” answered Ace. “This entire basement’s empty.” She hadn't been able to get down before the chloroform cloth had been clamped around her mouth, but what the guard had said before she fully lost consciousness - no point in screaming - had been perfectly clear. She brought her hands forwards and touched the raw skin tenderly, hissing. The woman cut open her legs. “So is the rest of the house.”
“Then I have to hope he's something elsewhere,” The woman stood and offered Ace her arm. “Can you walk? I don’t want to stay here a moment longer.”
She tried, and found she could. “Let me lean against the wall for a few moments, then I can. Do you have any water?”
“Vodka.” She drew a flask. “Sorry.”
Ace took a swig and winced. “Good god, woman.” She passed it back. “Better just a nip.”
The woman took a steeling sip and pocketed it. “You got a room anywhere?”
Ace shrugged. “I had one at a boarding house. I don’t think they’d appreciate my presence now. If they knew.” She watched the woman for a minute longer. “I’m Ace, by the way.”
She bit her lip, but answered soon enough. “Shou Yuing. Why were you here?”
Ace bit her lip tightly. “I have… A history. But I was looking for someone - I moonlight as a detective. When I have the money.”
A Mr Li. She'd been approached by a friend of his, who reported that he'd disappeared. That wasn't strange itself, and usually these cases remained unanswered, but he'd been in contact, apparently, with him - the woman had said his name, when she did, like a curse; but that was brave, most people nowadays were too afraid to - before his disappearance, and he also had a talent for engineering she hadn't seen in generations. That had left an awful and familiar taste in her life. It wouldn't have been the first time he had taken another person's talent for himself.
She pushed herself off the wall and tested her feet. They ached, but she could rest once she was out of here. “Have you run into any guards so far?”
“One. I knocked him out. How I got that.” She tossed her head at the key still in the lock.
“Then we had better get out quickly. Do you remember the way?”
Shou Yuing nodded, and slipped out in front. Ace swallowed, and followed her.
Though Shou Yuing clearly didn’t have much experience in this sort of thing, she was quiet enough, and Ace was content to follow behind her as they wound corners, reaching the stairs and creeping into a dead, cavernous kitchen. Shou Yuing paused, a worried look coming over her face. “Oh… Shit.” She looked around.
Ace stepped closer. “What is it?” Her hands itched for some sort of weapon, but as she scanned the kitchen, she found it empty. Bad enough to not have her nitroglycerine, but to not even have a plain knife, or even a rolling pin?
“This is where I left the guard.”
Ace bit her cheek so hard it bled, then stepped past Shou Yuing, into the main servants' quarters. “Come on. We don’t have time.”
“But my brother -”
“We’ll find nothing here worth staying for. There are places you can look - there’ll be records, somewhere - but we can’t stay. We can’t.” She’d started shaking again. “Where did you come in?”
“A window. Right…” Ace turned to follow her, but stopped. It was bolted shut. “Oh, god. He knows we’re here.”
Ace took her hand and pulled her away, through the servant’s quarters, up into a passage that led into one of the hallways. It was deceptively silent. “Do you have any backup plans?” Her voice was barely a whisper. “I had some nitroglycerine with me, in my bag, but he took it from me.”
“I… I… I did, but…” She swallowed. “I thought I’d be able to get out quick enough.” She pulled ahead, derringer out and aimed. They cut through the sitting room, and Ace found herself speeding into a sprint as they entered the hall, but she already knew they weren’t getting out.
Shou Yuing let out a horrible noise, and slowed. Ace, acting on instinct, put herself in front of her. She clenched her hands tightly into fists, even though she knew it would do nothing against anyone. She was defenceless.
“Wait a moment, Ace,” he said, in that familiar Scottish purr. “And if you would put that derringer down, whoever you are accompanying her.”
He was just standing in front of the doors, out in the open. Nothing on him but his umbrella. He hadn’t even bothered to take something from her bag, lying behind him.
The first thing you will notice about the Doctor is that he’s unarmed.
It had been just a day or so after she’d arrived in New York that she’d heard that. It had been before she’d first run into the Doctor, but it didn’t take a psychic to sense the fear, to see the way people kept their gazes down and their mouths shut. The protection money handed off behind closed doors, the disappearances, the gunshots late at night.
For many, it’s also the last.
“Shou Yuing,” she muttered. “Shou Yuing, do it. Put it away.” She turned her head to look at her, hoping her expression could convey the necessity of it.
Shou Yuing’s face was marred with an ugly expression, crumpled in hatred. The derringer was pointing very neatly at the Doctor, and her finger was tightening on the trigger.
“It won’t do anything. Please, Shou Yuing. You don’t want to play this way with him. Nobody survives that.”
For a moment longer, she held the gun, then, slowly, she brought it down, uncocking it, slipping it into her pocket, and held her hands up mollifyingly. The Doctor smiled pleasantly and approached them, stopping half the hall’s length away.
“You have her trained well, Ace. Friend of yours?”
“I’m not her pet,” spat Shou Yuing, as Ace deliberated over what would be most likely to keep her alive.
“Shou Yuing, isn’t it?” He tilted his head. “A pretty name, though I prefer it in the original Mandarin. Xiǎo Yún, am I right? Little Cloud.” He took a step closer. “Forgive me the familiarity. Your brother had a habit of muttering when he wrote. I feel as though I know you already.”
If looks could kill… Ace slipped her hand around one of Shou Yuing’s wrists, bringing them both down. She took her hand, and shared her gaze for a moment before looking back at the Doctor.
“She’s with me.” In for the penny, in for the pound, but maybe that could keep Shou Yuing alive, even if imprisoned.
Shou Yuing didn't try to pull away, but she didn't stay silent, either.
“I want to know where my brother is.”
The Doctor’s gaze flicked back to her. “Your brother…?”
“Li.”
“Personal name, if you don’t mind.”
“Wěi Yáng, if you’re that familiar.”
Li Wei Yang. Oh.
Of course.
“Great Ocean. Ironic, really. I did intend for you to meet him, but if you’re Ace’s friend... He’s at the bottom of the Atlantic. Or perhaps the harbour. I didn’t want to put him there, mind, he was clever, and I'd have liked to use his talents, but what can you do?”
Shou Yuing’s face crumpled, and she fell to her knees. Ace crouched down next to her, a hand on her shoulder to hold her steady. Shou Yuing didn’t even seem to notice it. “Stop this, please. Let her go.” She swallowed tightly. “It’s me you really want.”
“Unfortunately,” said the Doctor, “you did say she was with you.”
“Don’t hurt her, then,” was all she could manage. “Please, Doctor. Have some empathy, for once.”
He looked at Shou Yuing, and his face twitched, his true disdain showing through for a moment. Then he began to speak in something Chinese. Shou Yuing looked up the moment he started, eyes simmering with hatred through the tears falling from them.
“Bùshì,” she mumbled at last, rising on shaking legs.
“If you say so. But that wasn’t a very good plan of yours, was it, trying to blow this place up?” Ace glanced at Shou Yuing in shock. “Yes, Ace, I’m as surprised as you. Trying to line the foundations of this place with TNT won’t do anything when you can’t get downstairs to light it, or escape out that window like you planned.” He stepped closer, closer, but Ace couldn’t focus. She edged closer to Shou Yuing.
“TNT? In the servants’ quarters?”
Shou Yuing looked at her in confusion. “Yes.”
“Get your derringer.”
“Shou Yuing.” The Doctor’s voice had gone cold. He was striding towards them now. “Put that gun down this -”
“Shoot the bag!”
They realised her plan at the same time, and Ace watched the realisation set over both their faces, the Doctor suddenly still as Shou Yuing shot; she seized her hand and pulled her forwards. Even as a torpedo of flame and shattering metal came up around them, she pulled her through, hand slipping around to the flask in her pocket. She pulled it open and tossed the remains over the ruins of her bag, watching the flames jump higher as she went down the stairs front. The Doctor appeared at the very top, silhouetted by fire, and for a moment they locked eyes, then Shou Yuing’s second shot found him and he fell back. Ace turned and sprinted with her.
Gabriel Chase exploded behind them, but Ace didn’t look back. She took Shou Yuing’s hand in her own, and they carried on running.
An hour later, the adrenaline had worn off. Ace was stumbling, and Shou Yuing had to hold onto her as she took her up the stairs into her flat.
It was a sparse room, with peeling wallpaper, but there were a few simple pictures put around the room, and several stacks of books. Ace looked around, gravitating towards the bed. She peered at the photo on the mantelpiece - a happy family portrait. Two grandparents, two parents, and then Shou Yuing and Wei Yang. She looked around. There were scrapes on the wall, and when she looked, she could see evidence of disarray. A crack across the glass of a frame, drops of blood against the wall.
“Was this…?”
“Yes.” Shou Yuing sighed.
They drank and ate cold noodles without a word, then they set to work on each other. Shou Yuing brought over a small sort of medical kit, a folded letter tucked under her arm, and began to paste something from it over Ace’s hands and wrists. She winced, but didn’t pull away.
“I’m sorry about your brother.” A moment passed. Well, what could you say? “He was why I ended up there, you know. I had heard about him, how he just disappeared, and something didn’t feel right. From what I heard of him… he sounded like a good man.”
“Yeah.” Shou Yuing put away the paste and began to wrap Ace’s hands and wrist in bandages. “He was.” She sniffed. “I was planning to come and see him, maybe get some work here brewing. And then he wasn’t here when I arrived.” She stood to refill her flask, and sipped from it as Ace started sewing up her cheek. She did it shittily, but the only mirror in the flat was broken.
“I found his last letter to me then.” She spread it out over the duvet. “I think he must have written it before the Doctor... killed him. I remember not knowing why at the time. But I think he found something, after he met the Doctor, but before he could be taken, and that was why the Doctor killed him. That’s what he was saying to me; that Wei Yang… He didn’t die for no reason. The Doctor didn’t kill him for the sake of it. He said… He said he handed himself over for being killed, whatever it was he found, or he did afterwards. ‘Hand over’, shǒu shàng, ‘hand above’, like if you translated it word-for-word from English. Not dì or jiāochū or any of the other hundred words he could’ve used.”
Ace bit her lip. “Do you know what it was? Did Wei Yang write it down?”
“I’ve- well. I can translate the letter for you, if you want, but it doesn’t say. But I wonder if there was some kind of code. Here.” She tapped four different characters on the letter. “These ones are all written backwards. They’re nonsense in Mandarin, if you put them together, but in English… O-me-ga, and then shǒu. Hand, like the Doctor said. Omega hand. But I don’t know what it means, if it even does mean something.”
“Maybe it’s a code name.”
Shou Yuing stared at the letter, then sighed. “But I don’t see if it makes much difference, after all.”
Ace looked up. “Because…”
“Because he’s dead.” Shou Yuing picked, for a moment, at her cheek, then looked back. “Ace?” Her expression wavered. “Ace, I shot him in the heart.”
“Oh,” whispered Ace. “You don’t know.”
“Know what? He’s dead. He has to be. No man who’s been shot through the heart can live, let alone in an explosion like that.”
“Any normal man, yes.” Ace took Shou Yuing’s hand. “The Doctor has two hearts.”
Pure disbelief came over her face. “That’s not possible. No human being- it’s surely just a lie. To scare people.”
“It’s true. I know it is.”
“How? How can you say things like that? Claim to know him, and what he’s like? Even back at Gabriel Chase, you were saying things like that.”
Ace turned her head. “I’m against him, now,” was what she said. “But it’s true, Shou Yuing. The Doctor can survive anything. He’ll be alive. I don’t know how, but I know it.”
Shou Yuing was silent for a long time. Ace stared out the window. It was a terrible view, but the light that was beginning to fall through the window was beautiful.
“Then I want us to work together,” she said. “I think we both might be dead without the other.” She squeezed the hand Ace had forgotten was holding hers. “Whatever Wei Yang found, this… hand of omega, or whatever it was, it was enough for the Doctor to kill him. If we find out what it is, maybe we can bring him down. For good.”
“Maybe we can kill him.”
They looked at each other for a moment, then Ace nodded.
“I will,” she said. “I swear it. I’ll help you. But for now, we need to sleep. The Doctor won’t be after us just now. He likes his games, and he likes to drag them out.”
“Still,” said Shou Yuing. “Stay with me. I’ll feel better that way.”
“I can't find when I'm like this.” She lifted her bandaged hands.
“It’s your safety I was worried about, not mine.” Shou Yuing patted the bed. “You’re in no state to try and find a room somewhere.”
“Alright. If you want.”
So Ace slipped under the covers with her as the first light of dawn hit New York.
And somewhere, the Doctor started plotting.