Iced Glenfiddich in hand, Chen Wei took in Shanghai’s crackling frenzy as the city prepared for evening.
An advertising drone hummed past, speaking directly to him. Something about renewing his smart speakers. District 79’s cranes cut the scarlet sun to pieces.
‘Going up fast,’ he thought, with a hand casting a sharp shadow over his scarred face.
The whiskey’s heat lingered. His glass did not. Shards glinted where droplets fell.
Two muted pops were all it took to topple the ageing Neo-Triad.
His vitality seeping into a crimson pool on balcony tiles, he strained to meet the eye of his assassin.
He found what he was looking for on the other side of a sharp hole in his living room window.
A cherubic automaton, its smile unsettling, smoke rising from a chubby digit.
Chen Wei’s demise packaged in a joke.
. . .
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Love,
Alex