Chapter 6

Chu Zu took Sydney straight home.

Dai Xian was badly startled. She leaned against the doorframe, watching the two of them stare at each other, unsure for a moment whether she should intervene in the silent standoff.

Sydney was a perceptive kid.

He saw that Dai Xian still had all her limbs, and that she was holding her forehead in a cozy house unlike any he had ever seen, apparently even daring to show a hint of disapproval toward Chu Zu. He stopped confronting Chu Zu, turned his head, and threw himself into Dai Xian's arms.

Dai Xian caught him, and the first thing she did was clamp a hand over his mouth.

"You hid him so well. I never knew you had a child this old..." Dai Xian winked at Sydney. "Does Luciano know?"

Chu Zu put the Confre he had brought back in a vase and handed Dai Xian the card. "He does now."

Dai Xian was both exasperated and amused. "Do you know how to take care of a child?"

"That's why you're still alive." Chu Zu raised his chin slightly toward the bathroom. "Get him cleaned up, then we'll eat dinner."

Dai Xian understood what he meant.

Sydney splashed around in the bathtub.

In the Lower District, washing depended entirely on luck. There was no clean water source, and it took four or five corpses to exchange for a bottle of water that was barely drinkable.

Sydney was the bold sort. As long as he could roughly determine that a liquid he had gotten hold of was clear and noncorrosive, he would dare jump straight in and bathe.

Dai Xian had scolded him for risking his life, and had also said, "Are those shitty genes really so stubborn? He's exactly like him."

Sydney didn't know who the "him" Dai Xian was talking about was. He had once discreetly asked her if he was the illegitimate son of Dai Xian and his bastard father.

Dai Xian's face had instantly gone pale, as though he were describing the cruelest nightmare in the world.

"Your name is Sydney, and you're Chu Zu's child. You don't know who your mother is, but whenever Chu Zu had time, he went to District 18 to see you. He left you in the care of a woman in District 18, and he came to get you because she died."

The bathtub was full, but Dai Xian still turned the water flow up to maximum, letting the sound drown out part of her voice.

"Remember, Sydney, don't say anything you shouldn't when Chu Zu is around. If there's anything you want to say, tell me in private, and I'll pass it on."

Medicine from the treatment pod had been added to the bathwater. Although it couldn't take full effect, it could still gradually repair the burns on the child's skin.

Sydney submerged himself in the water, leaving only his eyes above the surface as he blew bubbles.

After hearing Dai Xian's instructions, he climbed out of the water.

"I'm sorry," he apologized suddenly.

"What?" Dai Xian asked.

Sydney told Dai Xian what had happened in District 18.

He twisted his fingers. "You said before that if I ran into Chu Zu, or a grown-up who looked a lot like me, and I knew I couldn't get away, I should kill myself right away... I didn't dare... I didn't want to die."

The woman pressed her lips together and remained silent for a long time.

Dai Xian had found Sydney when he was around three. At first, she had raised him casually as a resource, without investing any feelings in him.

She had never considered what would become of the child. Once she realized Sydney was of no use to Tangqi, and that Luciano would only see him as a liability, she stopped paying attention to him.

The last time she had seen Sydney, he was eight. Now he was already twelve.

Small and thin, with nothing but skin stretched over his bones.

To be sure, Dai Xian still had little affection for Sydney.

Perhaps the child's heartfelt "I didn't want to die" touched something in Dai Xian. Her heart suddenly softened, as though a piece of it had been pinched. It didn't hurt, but the ache was unbearable.

But she had brought about this misfortune. She had known the outcome, yet she had given Chu Zu the name anyway.

"I'll pass it on for you..." Dai Xian put an arm around the boy's shoulders and softened her voice. "Chu Zu didn't lie to you. He... really was the only person who looked forward to your existence."

Sydney wore poor-quality colored contacts that couldn't completely conceal the deep blue of his eyes, leaving a hint of clear purple mixed into the thin red.

"Okay." He rubbed the side of his face against Dai Xian's wet cheek.

Dai Xian was a liar.

Sydney didn't believe more than half of what she said.

An intelligence broker told people what they wanted to hear, and Sydney had learned how to lie from the woman.

After having his mouth covered several times, Sydney had a rough understanding of his situation. Someone was listening in on Chu Zu, and the person listening seemed able to accept that Chu Zu had acquired a son, but nothing more.

He didn't ask why Chu Zu had gone to District 18 to get him. Knowing more would only be more dangerous, but he could tell that Chu Zu and Dai Xian were plotting something.

Whatever the two of them were plotting was what they needed him for.

Sydney didn't mind at all.

Compared with this place, the conditions in District 18 were much worse. He was risking his life either way, but now he had the luxury of clean water to bathe in, soft new clothes, and food.

"What's this?" Sydney lifted the hem of his T-shirt and looked at the piece of translucent... tape Chu Zu had stuck to his lower abdomen.

Once Chu Zu had applied it, he paid it no more attention and sat down at the table to eat dinner.

Dai Xian straightened Sydney's T-shirt for him. "It's a Nanonutrition Patch. You're severely malnourished, but you can't eat too much at once either. The patch can provide the nutrients Quanyian needs."

Sydney touched his lower abdomen, blinked, and climbed onto a chair.

"Thanks, Dad!" He smiled, showing two pointed canines. "I'll do what you say, Dad!"

Chu Zu grunted in acknowledgment and pushed the synthetic plant milk over to him. "Drink it."

How nice.

Sydney slowly drank the contents of his glass, thinking, As long as I don't die in a stinking ditch in District 18, how much worse can things get?

Through the glass, the child covertly studied the man across the table.

Chu Zu was responsible for those corpses in District 18, and everyone else trembled with fear when they mentioned him. In Sydney's mind, Chu Zu was roughly the sum of every bully he could imagine.

After meeting him, Sydney still felt the same way. Perhaps he also had to add one more thing to his original impression: arrogance.

Chu Zu was the kind of person who kept things under his control. There was no one like that in District 18... probably no one like that in the entire Lower District.

So that came from status and power.

A distinguished status in the Upper District and the absolute power to trample on other people's lives: those two things made Chu Zu who he was.

The instant Chu Zu looked over, Sydney looked back down at the bottom of his glass.

It has nothing to do with me, he thought. I just need to take care of myself.

Over the following days, Sydney went from being on full alert to sprawling on the sofa watching projected cartoons, barely bothering to answer even when the man spoke to him...

He felt Chu Zu was largely responsible for his becoming so lax.

He didn't know what a normal father-son relationship was like, but wasn't Chu Zu much too permissive with him?!

Other than requiring him to go out with Dai Xian, Chu Zu didn't interfere with anything he did.

He ate whenever he wanted and stayed awake if he didn't want to sleep. Even after he was caught red-handed sneaking through several rooms while no one was around, Chu Zu didn't scold him, only telling him to put the things he had disturbed back where they belonged.

The man made no demands of him. Sydney couldn't read, and when Dai Xian asked Chu Zu whether they should teach him basic writing, Chu Zu turned to Sydney and asked, "Do you want to learn?"

Sydney worked up his courage and said, "I want to learn to fight! Fight like you, Dad!"

Dai Xian sighed helplessly. Chu Zu said, "Okay."

Then he beat Sydney until he cried for an entire day.

At noon the next day, Chu Zu pulled Sydney out of his room while the bruises all over his body had yet to fade. Sydney clung to his arm and began to wail, and Chu Zu asked him, "Didn't you want to learn to fight?"

Tears and snot streamed down Sydney's face. "Not anymore! I don't want to learn anymore!"

Chu Zu simply put him down and said, "Okay, then you don't have to."

Chu Zu also said, "I won't ask anything of you, but you have to take responsibility for your own choices."

Was there something wrong with him?

Sydney had to start considering the possibility.

Was his life so comfortable that he had found himself some amusement in the Lower District?

Chu Zu's life was indeed quite comfortable.

The house was big enough. When Chu Zu moved in, he had remodeled it, squeezing a bed into the hidden room Dai Xian used to compile intelligence.

Dai Xian didn't mind Chu Zu having access to her intelligence network, and she didn't care if he stayed there.

Though Chu Zu thought Dai Xian actually wanted to claim the master bedroom for herself—the only thing in her eyes when she looked at the little bed in the hidden room was disdain.

None of that was a problem.

With another person in the house, Dai Xian simply converted the study into a bedroom.

The new room was almost as large as the master bedroom, and its existing features, such as the projection equipment and electronic book wall, had been kept. It was luxurious enough to make even Chu Zu a little envious.

Chu Zu badly wanted to stuff Sydney into the little hidden room and move into the new bedroom himself, but he abandoned the idea under Dai Xian's smile.

"So I still have to live in the basement." Chu Zu was a little downcast. "Why do I feel like I have the lowest standing in the whole family?"

The system comforted him. "It's fine. You're used to roughing it, and the basement is quiet. If you really slept in the master bedroom upstairs, you'd jump up by reflex at the slightest disturbance outside and sleep even worse."

Chu Zu said, "...Good point."

His accommodation was comfortable, but Chu Zu still had to be on guard at all times against trouble from Luciano.

He didn't hide the child. He registered him as required, and when it came time for a genetic test, he simply brought up Esposito.

The government employee who had intended to draw blood for testing didn't understand and didn't want to understand. Without another word, the employee entered Sydney's identity into the system.

After Chu Zu took full advantage of another's power, all the paperwork for the child's identity was finally in order, and he became a lawful, properly registered Upper District resident.

Luciano had indeed made a point of asking about Sydney.

Luciano Esposito was very displeased that Chu Zu had suddenly acquired a twelve-year-old child. What was more, Jeeves hadn't even classified it as an anomaly, and only reported it after Luciano had finished dining with Preo's representative.

Luciano found it hard to accept that he didn't know Chu Zu's "secret" and immediately ordered Jeeves to look up all the records of Chu Zu's trips to the Lower Eighteenth District twelve years ago.

But Jeeves said there really was no way to check.

"Twelve years ago, you were seventeen. Your father was gravely ill, and you wanted to achieve something to make him change his will. So Mr. Chu Zu spent the entire year in the Lower District, only coming back occasionally to resolve troublesome matters in the Upper District for you."

Jeeves said, "That same year, your struggle with your younger brother grew more intense. People from the Esposito family and other families joined forces to hunt Mr. Chu Zu down. He asked to return temporarily, but you refused. It wasn't until your father died that you called Mr. Chu Zu back to help you deal with the remaining members of the family."

"From the time you were seventeen until you graduated at twenty, aside from the time he had to spend in other districts completing the tasks you assigned him, he was basically in District 18 the whole time."

Luciano glimpsed the electronic photograph on the desk. His head buzzed, and suddenly a few things became clear.

Why had Chu Zu been so thin at twenty, as though he had never eaten a proper meal? Why had a single word from him brought a miraculous faint smile to Chu Zu's face...?

Because Chu Zu had spent three years as though in exile.

How had he felt when he returned to the Upper District...? And after returning, how had he felt as he killed without blinking to carve out a broad future for Luciano?

Luciano had never thought about any of this before.

Chu Zu's explanation for the child was even more succinct. "I was twelve when I came to the Upper District too."

It hardly counted as an explanation, but Luciano took it to heart.

"Why are you such an idiot?" Luciano had complicated feelings, but in the end he laughed and chided him. "You don't have to explain anything to me. It's just a child. It wouldn't matter how many more you had with other women. Would I really make things difficult for you over something so trivial?"

Luciano had no intention of even meeting Sydney. He handled the matter lightly and let it pass, displaying the full extent of his tolerance.

"If there's anything you need my help with, just ask."

Luciano reached across the desk. He couldn't embrace Chu Zu as he had when he was twelve, but he could pat him on the shoulder as he had at twenty. He smiled and said, "Your son is my son. He can have whatever he wants."

Chu Zu's throat moved. He turned his face away, avoiding the blond hair that brushed the side of it, and lowered his red eyes to the floor.

"Thank you for your generosity, Luci," he said.