The police cruiser rounded the corner and finally stopped in front of a cheap three-story apartment building with peeling walls. The potholed concrete lot outside was already packed with people. Most of the spectators sniffled and craned their necks, their faces flushed with the cold and the excitement of watching a circus. Crude jeers, whistles, and cries of "Hit her!" and "Scratch his face!" rose one after another. Only a few older or weary voices struggled to plead, "Stop fighting!" or "Let it go!" amid the noise, but louder laughter soon drowned them out.
Li Jie switched on the siren, his face expressionless. Its shrill wail sliced through the noisy crowd like an invisible blade. Like jackals startled by gunfire, the spectators scattered to either side of the road with startled cries and curses, revealing two figures wrestling in the middle.
A stocky, middle-aged Black woman in a faded down jacket was hammering at an even larger Black man like an enraged lioness. The man was a moving mountain, his enormous body looking somewhat clumsy beneath her relentless assault. He awkwardly blocked her scratches and blows with his thick arms while trying to pin her arms and restrain her.
"Wow, one of your people." Li Jie curled his lip. "Good cop, bad cop?"
"It's freezing out. Can't these assholes give it a rest? Want me to play bad cop? They won't go easy on you." Wilson let out a long sigh. "Fuck, did that thing grow up on growth hormones? One slap from him and that woman would have to go to Alaska to pick up her head."
He shoved the door open and planted one foot in the dirty water on the ground, ready to rush out, only for his partner to catch him by the arm.
"Wait." Li Jie shook his head. "Haven't you noticed? The woman's the one who keeps attacking. The big guy's only defending himself and trying to restrain her. He hasn't hit back."
Wilson paused and squinted at them. A few seconds later, the impatience faded from his face, replaced by disbelief.
"Huh? Fuck... you're right! Has that bitch lost her mind? So... can we watch a little longer?"
"Cut the crap. Let's separate them. You handle the woman." Li Jie pressed a hand to the grip of his gun and decisively pushed his door open. "Don't worry. If he tries anything, I'll blow his head off. We both learned the rules on using firearms, right?"
He was already powerfully built, and his dark police uniform looked all the more stark and menacing against the drab, dilapidated surroundings. As he approached, the crowd that had scattered at the siren stirred again. Like the Red Sea parting before Moses, they all backed up two steps, opening a wider path.
Countless eyes immediately settled on him. Those gazes held a mixture of deeply ingrained fear of the police, suppressed resentment and hatred, false smiles meant to flatter and appease, and an indescribable envy of power...
Those tangled, clinging emotions came at him from every direction like an invisible net. But the moment those eyes met his, they recoiled as though burned, darting toward the ground, the sky, or one another's faces, leaving only hushed whispers.
"GCPD. You two, break it up right now."
The man immediately raised both arms and stepped back, giving the woman an opening. She jumped up and slapped her unsuspecting opponent hard across the head! The sharp crack was especially piercing in the brief silence. It barely qualified as a scratch to a man that size, but it was deeply insulting, and Wilson immediately forced her to the ground. That set her fury ablaze. Like an out-of-control Gatling Bodhisattva, she turned her head and spewed a barrage of vicious obscenities. Even the Black officer, who had practiced rap for two and a half years, struggled to withstand it, the veins at his temples throbbing.
"Son of a bitch!" Wilson was genuinely furious now. He drove his knee firmly into the woman's back to stop her rolling over and reached for the Taser at his waist. "Shut that fucking filthy mouth, or I'll give you fifty thousand volts! I guarantee it'll feel so good you'll piss your pants!"
On patrol in the Diamond District, language like that would have guaranteed a complaint. But people living in the slums probably wouldn't care about profanity; they would only answer with something filthier. Li Jie left him to it and beckoned to the man, indicating that he should follow him aside to give a statement.
The man obediently lowered his arms and followed Li Jie toward a slightly quieter edge of the lot, his head bowed. A dozen or so steps away, the woman's hysterical curses and Wilson's reprimands grew somewhat more distant. They were still audible, but at least they weren't quite so piercing. Even the air seemed a little fresher.
Li Jie stopped and habitually took his police notebook and a ballpoint pen from his breast pocket. Only then did he really have a chance to examine the hulking figure before him.
The man... or, more accurately, the boy, was astonishingly large. Li Jie himself stood 189 centimeters tall, weighed over two hundred pounds, and had a muscular build, yet the other boy was nearly a full head taller! His shoulders were absurdly broad, like a solid wall. The bulging muscles in his arms were clearly visible even at rest, and his joints were unusually thick. Yet his face, blue with cold, still looked youthful and immature. He had a broad nose, thick lips, dense, unruly facial hair, and the acne common to his age scattered across his forehead and cheeks. He wore a cheap, ill-fitting jacket washed almost white, a tight pair of jeans, and battered sneakers.
Li Jie considered him for a few seconds, then opened his notebook. "Name."
"Whelan. Waylon Jones."
His voice was deep and resonant, like muffled thunder rolling through an empty valley, yet his tone was unexpectedly timid.
"Age?"
"Fourteen."
How old?
Li Jie nearly snapped his pen. By his estimate, the boy stood over six foot nine and weighed at least three hundred pounds, with a face like a mountain giant...
He was fourteen?
He was fucking fourteen?
He looked up, his gaze moving between Whelan's disproportionately massive frame and the lingering boyishness of his face, searching for any trace of a lie. Instead, he noticed several fresh scratches winding across his cheek like centipedes, beside older, slightly raised red welts edged with purple bruising.
"Who is she to you?" Li Jie pointed at the middle-aged woman nearby, still hysterically struggling and shoving against Wilson. Her shrill curses echoed through the narrow alley. "Do you live together?"
"Yes. She's my aunt. I... live at her place." Whelan awkwardly rubbed his carrot-thick fingers together. "My parents are both... gone."
"I'm sorry." Li Jie gently patted his shoulder, turned to glance toward Wilson, then looked back into Whelan's eyes. "Does she hit you?"
The boy stayed silent for a long time, his breath turning to white mist in the cold wind. Finally, he slowly nodded, then immediately shook his head.
"No... not that often..."
"Really? Then what's this?"
Li Jie pulled the boy around into a half turn. He had already noticed a dark patch beneath the hair on the back of Whelan's neck, just at the edge of his collar. Its color was deep, and its texture seemed different from normal skin. He was about to pull down the collar for a closer look when Whelan let out a frightened growl, as though touched by a branding iron, and flung Li Jie's hand away with tremendous force!
"Don't! Don't touch me!"
He hopped clumsily backward, both hands instinctively covering the back of his neck, his eyes filled with animal fear and wariness. His heavy body landed so hard that even the concrete seemed to tremble slightly.
"Hey! I'm not trying to hurt you. Calm down. Let me take a look." Li Jie raised both hands, palms outward, in a soothing gesture, keeping his voice as steady as possible.
"I'm just concerned about you. Let me see, okay?"
Whelan stared hard at him, his chest heaving and his enormous fists clenched. After several suffocating seconds of stalemate, the terror in his eyes slowly gave way to a weary resignation. At last, he nodded and lowered his hands, though his body remained rigid as stone.
Li Jie approached cautiously and gently pulled his collar aside. Beneath it lay a broad patch of dark brown scars, uneven as rough leather. They were packed closely together and extended down his back, gleaming with an unsettling sheen in the dim sunlight.
"Fuck." He drew a sharp breath and forced the curse through his teeth. "Did she burn you with boiling water or hot oil?"
"No, she didn't." Whelan shook his head, his voice dry. "This... it's something wrong with me. The doctor said it's a genetic condition... keratosis or something..."
The words seemed to weigh a ton, and he struggled to force them out through a profound sense of shame and helplessness. Li Jie hesitated, then lightly touched the scarred patch with his fingertips. It felt cold and hard, nothing like human skin. It was more like the scales of some reptile.
His scalp prickled as something suddenly occurred to him, and he turned to look toward Wilson. The middle-aged woman was screaming herself hoarse. "Get that freak away! That reptile monster! Lock him up! Put him in a cage!"
"Do you want to press charges?" Li Jie turned back to Whelan. "If you do, we'll hold her in custody for now, unless she can find someone to bail her out or prove she hasn't harmed a minor."
"No, no, that's okay, officer." Whelan shook his head in a panic. "I don't want to send her to prison. I have nowhere else to go."
"All right. You're... not quite what I expected." Li Jie gave him a long, inscrutable look, then turned and walked toward Wilson. Despite the cold, the Black officer's head was drenched in sweat, steam rising from it. Li Jie watched him for a few seconds before laughing. "I'm guessing you're not cold anymore."
"Can you cut the fucking commentary? I didn't expect this bitch to be so damn strong." Wilson panted for breath. "Well? Are we taking her in?"
Li Jie shook his head and stared at the woman still swearing beneath Wilson's knee.
"Listen. You're suspected of deliberately injuring a minor. We should be sending you to jail. But your nephew has chosen not to press charges, so you'd better have enough sense not to start any more shit. Understood?"
He gestured to Wilson. "Let her go!"
The instant the pressure eased, the woman sprang up, clawing and flailing. But when she saw Li Jie's finger resting on the safety of his 1911, her eyes suddenly cleared. She looked at Li Jie, then at Wilson, before abruptly clutching her neck and collapsing onto the ground with a scream.
"Oh God! I can't breathe!"
Li Jie handed the incident paperwork to Wilson. His partner was a virtuoso with a high-voltage baton, anyway. Ignoring the Black woman's theatrical attempt to extort them, he returned to Whelan, took a hundred dollars from his wallet, and pressed it into the boy's enormous palm along with his personal business card.
"Buy yourself a warmer coat. Stop wearing those rags. If anything happens, call me directly."
Whelan went rigid. A barely perceptible tremor entered his deep voice. "No... no... thank you, officer, but I can't take this..."
"It's fine. Consider it an interest-free loan." Li Jie patted his upper arm. It felt hard enough to hurt his hand, almost like scaled armor. Without lingering, he turned toward the cruiser, dispersed the spectators still pointing and reluctant to let the show end, and opened the door to sit in the passenger seat. He rolled down the window and called to Wilson, who had just finished signing the paperwork.
"You drive us back!"
"You should've fucking done that ages ago." Wilson scrambled into the driver's seat, rubbed his hands together in satisfaction, and started the engine. The cruiser slowly pulled away from the chaotic lot. "By the way, why were you so concerned about that kid?"
"Why else?" Li Jie leaned back, closed his eyes, and couldn't help laughing. "Because he's so pitiful. He's never been able to find his father."
Wilson froze, then caught on and slapped the steering wheel, making the horn give a short honk.
"Fuck! Fuck you! Keep being that vicious, brother, and you're going to lose me one of these days! I'll have to go home and think of ways to discriminate against you!" He sighed, torn between laughter and exasperation, then grew more serious. "Seriously, though. He's not Asian."
"Because I'm worried he'll eat his own kind."
"His own kind?" Wilson raised an eyebrow, intrigued. "He's in a gang? Don't tell me he works for The Roman. He looks like he'd make a good enforcer, but... isn't he a little young? Fourteen? Jesus!"
"No. I meant literally."
Li Jie tilted his head slightly and looked into the rearview mirror. That lonely, mountain-sized figure still stood amid the dispersing crowd, motionless, staring after them like an ancient colossus abandoned among the ruins.
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