JC: Harry and the Lee Girls
Chapter 1
By
Lazlo Zalezac
Copyright (C) Lazlo Zalezac, 2004

Shao Lee stared at the needle of the sewing machine through the 
blur of tear filled eyes. As the needled performed the up and down 
movement required to bind the two pieces of fabric together, her 
mind kept returning to her rape earlier that day. The bastard Wong 
had picked her as his victim today. She rocked so that her left 
buttock was supporting her weight. It kept the weight off her ass 
and her bottom from sitting in the pool of her own blood. It 
wouldn't be until the dinner break that she would have a chance to 
wash away the blood.

Wong liked it when a girl bled after his violation of her since it 
made him feel big. It was his way of boasting that his cock was 
huge, after all it was big enough to tear up their asshole. Getting 
raped wasn't the end of his victim's ordeal, he enjoyed making 
them clean his cock afterwards. He always came a second time, the 
flavor of his come mixing with the blood and shit. The rape never 
ended until he was satisfied that his cock was clean. 

Shao Lee sobbed, but tried to keep quiet. If she made too big a deal 
out of her abuse, Wong would whip her as an example to the other 
women in the room. It was okay to shed tears, but to whimper, 
speak, or scream was not forgiven. If she had actually fought the 
treatment she received, he would have killed her in front of 
everyone else as an example. She knew that. A few weeks after she 
had arrived there, one girl had slapped him. It only took her six 
hours to die, but they were a horrible six hours. 

Wong smiled at her as if she was supposed to be happy that he had 
chosen to relieve his desires in her asshole. She didn't know if he 
really believed that the girls in the room enjoyed his attentions. 
From the way he acted, it seemed highly likely. She knew that 
every girl in that room would kill him if given the opportunity.

She finished the sewing the shirt that she was working on. She 
earned a quarter for each shirt that she sewed. She had to do forty 
of them to cover what they charged for the two meals a day and the 
cot she slept on. Everything after that went to pay down her debt of 
ten thousand dollars. It was hard to imagine that she had wanted to 
come to America. If she had known what she would find here, she 
would have remained in Hong Kong to work as a prostitute. 

As she put the shirt in her basket, she looked around the room 
where she spent fourteen hours a day seven days a week. She was 
locked in a cage fifty feet by a hundred feet in size. The chain-link 
fencing that defined the boundaries of the cage ran from floor to 
ceiling. A locked door at the front led to the main office from 
which Wong watched them. A door at the rear led to the dorm 
where they slept at night. Chain-link fencing surrounded the dorm 
as well. The ceiling was twenty-five feet high with florescent lights 
that hung down in four rows from the ceiling. Half of the lights 
didn't work, lending a dull flickering of brown light to the 
depressing atmosphere. The floor was concrete and cold on her 
bare feet.

Crammed in the work area was row after row of sewing machines. 
Behind each machine was a girl. They ranged in age from fourteen 
to seventeen. It was well known that Wong didn't like adult women 
working for him. It seemed that raping them didn't produce enough 
blood to satisfy his sadistic need. The older girls usually 
disappeared in the middle of the night. No one believed that the 
missing girls lived. It was impossible for any of them to pay off the 
debt before they became too old for him and he didn't like the idea 
that they would talk about him to others.

As she prepared to work on the next shirt, she glanced at her older 
sister, Da Lee. Her sister was wearing panties and nothing else. It 
was too expensive to buy clothes, so most of the girls wore nothing 
except panties. Da Lee and Shao Lee did the same, but now her 
panties were ruined and she'd have to work extra to get another 
pair. 

Wong acted like they dressed that way to attract his attention 
despite the fact that he knew they couldn't afford more clothes. It 
took eight shirts to pay for a pair of panties. It took twenty shirts to 
pay for a bra. It took thirty shirts to pay for a T-shirt. Getting a 
skirt was outrageously expensive. The clothes would be ripped to 
shreds the next time he raped her so wearing clothes wasn't really 
worth the cost.

She cringed at the expression of anger and pure hate on her sister's 
face. Da Lee always reacted with anger when her little sister was 
raped. Last time, she had almost lost control of her temper. One 
day, she would go too far and Shao Lee would have to watch her 
die. She turned her attention back to her sewing not wanting to 
think about that. Just a couple of more shirts and she would be able 
to start working for the money to get new panties. 

She remembered back to the day when her parents had died. She 
and her sister had been in the boarding house in which they lived. 
They had huddled in the one room shared by the entire family, 
waiting for their parents to return from work. Her mother and 
father were drug couriers for the Triad in the Tsim Sha Tsui area of 
Hong Kong. It was a high-risk job that didn't pay much money, but 
it paid enough to get them a room and food. When their parents 
didn't return by nightfall, they knew something was wrong. Their 
parents never left them alone at night. It was too dangerous for 
teenage girls to be left alone with all of the creeps and drug addicts 
in the boarding house. 

They got word at midnight that both of their parents had been 
murdered. It was only seven hours later when they kicked out of 
the boarding house. If life was hard in the back alleys of Tsim Sha 
Tsui for anyone without a home, it was impossible for two young 
orphans. Desperate, they had searched for some way to survive. 
One of the important men in the neighborhood had told them they 
could come to America.

It sounded so simple. The man had told them that they could 
borrow the money to travel to America. Once there, they could get 
a good paying job were they would be able to pay off the debt in 
three months. The two sisters had discussed it for a day and then 
told the man they would do it. The idea of living in America, the 
land of opportunity, was just too attractive to the romantic young 
girls. 

It wasn't so simple. They had come here, not even knowing where 
here was, and discovered that their debt had been sold to Wong. 
After one look at them, he said that they were too ugly to be 
whores. He snarled as he told them that no man would pay money 
to fuck such scrawny women with flat faces. He took their 
passports and locked them up in this hellhole. They were his slaves 
and, as such, he controlled everything about their life. When they 
worked, when they ate, and when they slept were decided by him. 
They existed for his profit and his pleasure. 

She finished the shirt and put it in the box. Just a couple more and 
she'd be working towards new panties. Her ass hurt, her back was 
stiff, her fingers were numb, and she was hungry. All she wanted 
to do was cry, but slaves weren't allowed to cry. A quick glance at 
her sister showed that the older girl was about to explode in anger. 
It upset her that her elder sister wasn't calming down. That was bad 
news.

She glanced out the windows and saw that it was starting to get 
dark. That meant they would be eating soon. After dinner, she 
would have three hours to make some money towards her debt.  
She wondered why she bothered to work so hard. She would have 
to sew forty thousand shirts and dresses to pay off her debt. It was 
an insane prospect, since there was no way anyone could do that.

She stopped working and stared at the sewing machine blankly. 
Was it better to keep on working to die later or to stop with the 
consequence of dying today? Keeping her head down, she looked 
up at Wong. The man might have passed for handsome if he wasn't 
such a sadist. Tall for a Chinese man, he was fit with well-defined 
muscles. The rumor was that he was a killer for a Chinese Triad 
and that this business was just one way of paying him.

The girl next to her had filled her box and raised her hand. Wong's 
assistant, Chin, would come in the room and count the number of 
shirts in the box before carrying it away. Every girl in the room 
knew exactly how many items they had to sew before they could 
leave. The counting would be watched carefully by the girl, despite 
the fact that it was meaningless. Not one woman had ever paid off 
the debt that had landed her in this situation.

Da Lee had watched her sister get raped by Wong, furious that she 
could do nothing to help her. This was her fault and she felt 
shamed by it. She was the older sister and was supposed to protect 
her little sister. What had she done? She had brought her little 
sister to this place and then watched as she was raped repeatedly. 
Even worse, she had done nothing to stop the rape. She had to do 
something, but what? 

There was nothing that she could do to help her sister. Tonight, she 
would try to comfort her and give her a little extra food. It was 
hard to comfort her since she knew that when her sister's wounds 
healed, he would rape her again. Then would come the day when 
she wouldn't bleed after he raped her. The body adapted to protect 
itself from injury and, in this case, it would be fatal. Her little sister 
would be killed soon afterwards. 

Da Lee knew that she wouldn't have to watch her sister die. She'd 
probably be dead before then. She had been raped just as many 
times as her little sister. She bore it, thinking that as long as he was 
raping her that he was leaving her sister alone. The last time, she 
hadn't bled much. It meant that her time was near.

Chin unlocked the door and stepped into the room. Turning his 
back to the girls, he fumbled with the key to lock the door behind 
him. It was just a momentary lack of attention, but Da Lee took 
advantage of it. Shao Lee sucked in her breath when she saw her 
sister fly to the front of the room and through the unlocked door. 
She had pushed Chin, who was taken entirely by surprise, to the 
floor in her rush. Running without regard to anything else going on 
around her, Da Lee ran through the door that led outside the 
building. A furious Wong followed her.

She had gotten three steps from the building when she realized that 
she had no idea where to run. She stopped before running into the 
wall. She looked around before turning to the left and had taken 
one step when Wong caught her by the arm. She screamed when 
he spun her around and slapped her. Her scream echoed through 
the trash filled alley. She fell to the ground, her legs swept out 
from under her.

Without saying a word, Wong looked around for something to use 
to as a whip. On the ground was a twisted coat hanger that would 
make a perfect whip. After picking it up, he started hitting her 
across the back at a fast and furious pace. He wanted her bloody 
before taking her back in the shop. Each time the hanger hit her, it 
ripped a thin strip of skin creating streaks to blood that started to 
blend together. 

Unable to hold it in, she screamed as the beating continued. The 
pain wasn't nearly as intense as the realization that she was going 
to die and her sister would have to watch it happen. Her plan to 
escape and then rescue her sister had failed. She screamed her 
frustration and anger to the alley.

A loud rap of metal hitting against dumpster sounded like a pistol 
shot. The sound echoed through the alley cutting off her scream. 
She looked up as Wong stopped what he was doing. Through tear 
filled eyes, she saw an elderly man in a green robe standing in the 
alley holding a shepherd's staff in his hand. In Cantonese, he 
shouted, "Leave her alone!"

Incredulous at her luck, she knew that she would have to do her 
part to get away. Grabbing the opportunity to escape, she started to 
scramble forward. Her attempt was cut short when Wong pulled 
her hair and pushed her to back onto her knees. Laughing at the old 
man, he reached in his coat and pulled out a pistol. 

"Fuck off," Wong replied in Cantonese. With a casualness that 
surprised Da Lee, he fired the pistol without bothering to wait for 
the old man to respond. The man in the green robe spun as the 
bullet ripped into him. Wong watched as the man fell into the trash 
in the alley. Due to the dark shadows of the alley it was impossible 
to see if he had killed him, but Wong knew he was a good enough 
shot that the man was hurt enough to be unable to get away. Wong 
would send Chin out to take care of the matter and that would be 
that. Even if the old man tried to crawl away, Chin would find him 
and kill him.

The first thing he had to do was take care of the girl. He hit her 
again just to let her know that he was the one in control of the 
situation. She cringed, but froze when grabbed her hair. Lifting her 
by her hair, he pulled Da Lee towards the door. He froze at the 
sound of a bottle breaking behind him. As he turned to see what 
had created the noise, his hand moved into his coat to pull the 
pistol.

A dozen homeless men were approaching him, moving in a slow 
steady shuffle. They were armed with boards and broken bottles. 
One of the men had a metal bar. A chill went through Wong as he 
stared at the men. He knew the look in their eyes, having seen it 
twice in his life. It was the look of men who accepted that they 
were going to die, but that they were going to die trying to kill him. 
He wondered, 'What would cause them to be that willing to die?'

Another noise attracted his attention and he turned to where he had 
shot the man in the robe. Another dozen homeless men had shown 
up, armed with anything that could be used as a weapon. All of 
them had that same empty look in their eyes. For the first time in 
his life, Wong felt real fear. Rather than going for his gun, he 
pulled Da Lee by the hair towards the door. There was nothing 
gentle about the way he dragged her back into the building. 
Hearing the noises in the alley, he locked the door behind him. 

Inside, he threw Da Lee to the floor and kicked her in the side. She 
collapsed on the concrete as pain exploded inside her. For a full 
minute, he stood over her trying to decide what to do as a fitting 
punishment. That she was going to die wasn't at question; it was 
more a question of how she should die. She was going to have to 
serve as an example for the others.

He shouted, "Chin, get a couple of boys and hang her on the 
fence."

Chin disappeared into the front office and returned after a few 
minutes with two other men. Da Lee stared at them in horror. 
There were only two times anyone saw the front room thugs. One 
was when they came back to rape one of the girls. The other time 
was when someone was going to die. There were no doubts in her 
mind concerning why they were there and who their victim would 
be. Shao Lee started to cry into her hands, feeling guilty that her 
rape had led her sister to losing control. It just wasn't fair.

The two men picked up Da Lee as if she weighed nothing and 
carried her into the cage. While they held her up against the fence, 
Chin tied her in place using ties made from clothes hangers. Her 
legs were spread with her feet three feet off the ground. She was 
quickly bound to the fence at her feet, knees, hands, shoulders, 
elbows, and neck. The wire cut off the circulation to her 
extremities without cutting the skin. Once she was tied, Chin 
ripped off her panties. Shao Lee knew that the ordeal was only 
beginning and that it was going to get even worse.

While Da Lee was being hung, Wong went into the office to wait 
for Chin to return. He wanted to plan how he was going to make 
this little problem work for him. Her death would put him a little 
behind schedule unless he managed to get another girl in a day or 
two. A girl cost him about four thousand dollars to purchase from 
the traders and an additional dollar a day to keep her fed. He was 
making good money on the designer knock-off clothes the girls 
were producing. Who needed to go to China, when China could 
come here?

It was just a few minutes later when Chin returned to the office. 
The young man looked nervous, knowing that it was his fault that 
the girl almost got away. Wong was one of the bosses within the 
Triad and was third from the top in this country. If Wong was 
really angry, Chin knew that his boss could make him disappear at 
any time. He knew that if the girl had escaped, the chances were 
good that his boss would have hung him in front of the room. 
Bowing his head, he said, "Sir, she has been hung in the normal 
manner."

"Good," replied Wong. It was time to punish Chin for his role in 
the events of the evening. In a quiet voice, he said, "I need you to 
go out back and dispose of someone. I had to shoot some asshole 
in a green dress. If the old man isn't dead, make sure that he gets 
that way."

"Yes, sir," replied Chin relieved at the assignment. He gave a half 
bow and then left the room. He was smart enough to know better 
than to argue with having to do morgue detail. Taking care of 
bodies was beneath him, but he was being punished for letting the 
girl get loose. As he left, he wondered if Wong had really shot an 
old man wearing a green dress. Maybe it was an old woman. Even 
in this part of the city, old men didn't walk around wearing dresses.

Now that Chin was taking care of the body, Wong could have a 
little fun. He left the office and entered the fenced area. Stepping in 
front of Da Lee, he looked over at her with a smile on his face. 
Wriggling, she tried to get free but was unsuccessful. Knowing she 
was going to die, she hoped to anger him enough to kill her 
quickly. She spat in his face and said, "You have the smallest cock 
I've ever seen."

He didn't react immediately, but turned to face the women in the 
room. His face was tight with controlled rage. The vein in his 
forehead throbbed signaling his anger in time with his heartbeat. 
He shouted, "She tried to cheat me by running away without 
paying her debt. No one cheats me!"

He walked around the front of the room furious at Da Lee. Her 
comment about his cock had angered him, but he could not say 
that. Instead, he had to use the excuse of her breaking her contract. 
The girls stared at him in horror. A few knew what to expect him 
to do while the rest guessed what would happen next. Confident 
that he had their attention, he reached into a pocket and pulled out 
a very small knife. Making a production out of it, he opened one of 
the blades and held it up for all to see. The blade was barely an 
inch long, useful only for clean dirt out from underneath 
fingernails. 

A few of the girls, on the verge of laughing, relaxed thinking the 
knife was nothing. That impression was dispelled less than five 
seconds later when he cut a four-inch slice across the girl's 
stomach. It was a shallow cut, intended to create more pain than 
shed blood. She screamed in pain provoking a smile from Wong. 
The smile chilled the girls to their soul. He said, "We'll be seeing 
lots of that for the next few days."

Da Lee wondered if she had understood him correctly. He would 
be doing that to her for the next few days? The word days echoed 
in her mind. The true horror of what awaited her was only now 
becoming clear. She had watched that bastard Wong torture other 
women in her position, but none of them had lasted days. She had 
tried to imagine what they had gone through. Now that she was 
hanging there with a gash across her stomach, she was beginning 
to get an idea of what she faced.

Shao Lee was frozen at her sewing machine staring at her sister as 
she realized what would happen to her. Cut by cut, he would drain 
the life from her sister. She wanted to help, but what could she do? 
If she tried anything, she would end up there with her sister. She 
lowered her head, sobbing in anguish. Her cries were too loud. 
Another scream emerged from her sister as another four-inch cut 
appeared along her side. 

Moving to stand in front of Shao Lee, Wong said, "I'm going to cut 
her every time you cry!"

The horror of the situation descended upon Shao Lee. Reacting to 
her sister's pain would only create more pain for her sister. Her 
sister shouted, "Don't cry for me Shao. Don't give the bastard the 
satisfaction."

Stepping back, his hand whipped out and a streak of blood 
appeared across her breast passing right through her nipple. The 
girl screamed in pain as the nerves, sensitive to all forms of 
stimulation, protested the passage of the knife. Every girl in the 
room gasped in shock, feeling sympathetic pains in their breasts. 
Shao Lee couldn't help herself as her hands flew up to cover her 
breasts. 

A bloody Chin stumbled back into the room in shock. Turning to 
Wong, he said, "There's hundreds of them!"

Seeing the blood covering his assistant, Wong asked, "Hundreds of 
what?"

"Men, ugly men." Hundreds of homeless men had shown up in the 
alley. As soon as he had stepped out of the building, he had been 
pelted with bottles and small rocks. It was almost as if they didn't 
want to hit him since most of the debris landed around the spot he 
stood. Only a few poorly thrown rocks had hit him. A shiver ran 
through his body at the memory of their faces. Sure, the men were 
ugly, but the true horror was the empty eyes set in hard faces. 

Recalling the homeless men he had experienced in the ally, Wong 
walked over to the window and looked out over the alley. He fully 
expected them to have left. Instead, the alley was filled with 
homeless men, at least a two hundred of them were waiting for 
something. The men were standing stock-still, staring at the 
building with that look in their eyes. He knew what they were 
waiting for. They were waiting for him and once they had him, 
they would kill him. He knew that he could step outside with a 
machine gun and they would just keep coming. 

He walked over to the other side of the building. With so many 
men in the back, he was sure that the front of the building would 
be empty. These homeless men might look scary, but Wong 
believed they were so stupid that they would only guard the back 
door. A frown crept over his face when he looked out the front 
window. There were five hundred homeless people out there, 
blocking the road. Bag women, beggars, and winos stood together 
staring at the front of the building. 

Wong opened the window and shouted, "Get away from here!"

Heads lifted to look at him, but no one answered or moved away. 
He looked at the one of the men in the front. A grizzled beard 
covered the man's face, a mole grew from his cheek below his left 
eye, his chipped teeth were green, and his hair was greasy. The 
man wore a tattered coat. Underneath the coat, was a green sweater 
stained with past meals. A shirt and undershirt were just visible. In 
his hand, he held a two-by-four that was about three feet long. 

Other men in the crowd looked just as bad. Scattered through the 
crowd, men coughed. Their diseased lungs expelled phlegm that 
ultimately ended on the sidewalk beside them. No one seemed to 
notice or care. In some areas, men shared a bottle of some kind of 
booze, hidden within a brown bag such that only the short neck of 
the bottle was visible.

A commotion at the end of the street caught his attention. 
Hundreds of women had shown up and were entering the crowd. 
For a minute he was puzzled by what he was seeing. Whereas the 
homeless men were wearing many layers of clothes, the women 
wore almost nothing.  He realized that they were streetwalkers. 
Aloud, despite the fact that no one was there to answer his 
question, he asked, "What the fuck are whores doing here?"

Chin came up to stand beside Wong after checking the alley again. 
He said, "There are even more homeless showing up in the back. 
What's going on?"

"I don't know," answered Wong. The situation was beginning to 
make him angry. He slammed the window shut. With a frown, he 
said, "Make sure the doors are locked and put a man on guard at 
each of them."

As Chin went to do as directed, Wong returned to his office. 
Inside, he sat down at his desk and tried to figure out what was 
going on. What was every homeless person in the city doing 
surrounding his building? It didn't make sense. All he had done 
was shoot a crazy old man in a dress. The idiot had stuck his head 
into business where it didn't belong.

The telephone rang demanding his attention. Answering it, he 
listened in shock as one of the men who worked for him explained 
that he was unable to get to the shop to deliver the food for the 
girls. The homeless had the entire area surrounded three blocks out 
from the shop. Wong slammed down the phone angry at the news. 

Other people were concerned about the situation. The police had 
surrounded the homeless, but weren't doing anything to break up 
the gathering. The police didn't consider it a riot. None of the 
homeless were moving, making threats, or even talking. They 
weren't damaging any property. A few of the more together 
individuals had actually requested that porto-potties be set up.

Da Lee hung from the chain-link fence in misery. Her arms and 
legs hurt from supporting her body, but that was nothing compared 
to the cut across her breast. That wound burned like a never-ending 
fire, pulses of heat released in time with each heartbeat. Her mind 
kept imagining him cutting her breasts several more times. The 
horror of it paled when she realized that he would cut her clit at 
some point in the future. She'd want to die, but it wouldn't kill her.

For at least thirty minutes, her mind retreated from reality trying to 
protect her sanity. Her body convulsed, but the wire holding her to 
the fence hid it. After coming around, she stared at her little sister 
feeling sorry for her. No one should have to watch someone they 
love get tortured to death. 

"Da Lee, are you okay?" 

The look on her little sister's face conveyed that Shao Lee was 
feeling every pain applied to her sister. How to answer the 
question? She hurt something fierce, but to tell her sister that 
would be cruel. "We both know he's going to kill me. Don't blame 
yourself. I provoked him. Eat, drink your water, and work. Maybe 
you will get out of here. Don't think about me."

Shao Lee held a finger to her mouth to let her know not to talk 
anymore. Someone was coming and there was no sense in creating 
more trouble. Hanging there, Da Lee wanted to laugh at the irony 
of her behavior and the fact that she didn't want to get in trouble. 
She would be good to avoid getting hurt more frequently, but being 
good would only make her ordeal longer and, ultimately, more 
painful. The human spirit is amazing in how tenaciously it will 
fight for life.

Wong came out of the office and stared at the women in the 
sewing pen. Keeping them under control was a full-time job. The 
news that their dinner would not be arriving until after the 
homeless people left was going to make keeping control even more 
difficult. Taking out his knife, he opened the short blade. He poked 
a couple holes in Da Lee's stomach with the same offhand 
casualness that he had shown when he shot the man in the alley. 
The short blade prevented any major internal injuries, but it did 
injure nerves she never knew existed and now they throbbed in 
pain. Her anguished scream was the result that he had wanted. 

Smiling at the girls in the room, he said, "No dinner tonight."

The reaction among the girls was immediate, but was quickly 
subdued when he poked another hole in Da Lee. Her scream 
reminded them what they could expect if they created problems. 
Confident that there wouldn't be any arguments, Wong turned and 
walked back to his office. 

Chin was waiting for him in the office with a worried expression 
on his face. He had heard the announcement and knew that it 
meant they had a real problem. He asked, "If I may be so bold, but 
why aren't we feeding them?"

Irritated by the entire situation, Wong answered, "The boys can't 
get the food to us through the crowd outside."

He was about to explain how they would have to pay for their lack 
of nerve when the telephone rang. Wong picked it up and stated, 
"Wong here."

The clipped voice on the other end of the line was that of his boss 
and he sounded angry. "Wong, I am not a happy man. I am on my 
way to the airport. All of the other bosses are on their way to the 
airport. You are on your own. It would be best for all of us if you 
would die."

Shocked at what his boss was saying, Wong asked, "What in the 
hell is going on?"

"You were on television. We have been forced to drop all of our 
investments on this continent, once again," answered his boss. 

"What are you talking about?" asked Wong. Why would the Triad 
pull out of North American overnight? Nothing about this day was 
making sense to him. Wong asked, "What is going on?"

"You really don't know?" asked his boss incredulous that Wong 
had created such a mess and didn't even know what he had done.

"I really don't know," admitted Wong. The admission would kill 
his career, but as far as he could tell it was over anyway. A dead 
career was better than being dead.

"You shot someone tonight!" The anger in the voice was real.

"Yeah. I shot an old crazy man in a dress that had seen our 
operation," answered Wong with just as much anger in his voice. It 
was wrong of his boss to question how he handled his businesses. 
If someone poked around Triad business, that person disappeared. 
Everyone knew that. 

"You fool. That wasn't a crazy old man in a dress. That was a 
fucking Druid," replied his boss just before the phone went dead.

Wong paled at the news that he had shot a Druid. After recovering 
his wits sufficiently to act, he hung up the phone with a shaking 
hand. The last time someone killed a Druid, the Triad had lost 800 
members and over a billion dollars in assets. The killers had been 
the Russian Mob. Today there wasn't a Russian Mob, either here or 
in Russia. No wonder the entire contingent of the Triad on this 
continent was running scared. Even if he came through this alive, 
he was a dead man.

Watching the very uncharacteristic reaction of his boss, Chin 
wondered what Wong had heard over the phone. This was not a 
good sign. He had watched Wong accept the news that a rival had 
killed his brother. Wong had not reacted in any visible manner 
except to get a little harder. That was the expected reaction of a 
boss to bad news. To stand in the middle of the room, pale and 
with hands shaking, was not how a boss acted. 

Wong moved over to his desk, his legs barely supporting him as 
his mind raced through his options. He sat down in his chair and 
tried to figure out what to do. The first thing was to get out of there 
with as much money as possible. Looking up, he focused on Chin 
and said, "Get in the waiting room and prepare the men for war."

The announcement seemed a little extreme, but Chin nodded and 
left the office. Once he was gone, Wong picked up the remote 
control for his television and tuned into the local channel. On the 
screen was a shot of a hospital with a reporter standing in front of 
it with a microphone. Wong listened as the news reporter described 
the situation at the hospital. The only information that they had 
was that a Druid had been shot earlier in the day and had been 
admitted to the hospital in critical condition. Druids were flying in 
from all parts of the country. 

The scene changed to the newsroom. The announcer babbled on 
for several minutes about how they were still waiting to learn the 
identity of the Druid that had been shot. He then announced that 
another breaking news story was being tracked that evening.  
Wong frowned when the scene on the television changed to the 
area outside his shop.  

A news reporter was pointing down the street to where police cars 
were parked. The reporter explained that hundreds of homeless 
people had gathered there, but wouldn't let anyone near them. In 
fact, they had escorted the press away and would not allow them to 
approach any closer. No one could say why so many homeless 
people had gathered in that area. Speculation was that some sort of 
homeless gathering had been called. A bystander had suggested 
that they were electing some sort of new king of the homeless.

Wong knew the truth and understood how his boss had figured it 
out. The Triad didn't trust co-incidence. Believing in co-incidence 
was the quickest way to get killed. A Druid getting shot and the 
homeless marching on his shop had to be connected. He didn't 
know why the homeless cared about a Druid, but it was clear they 
were here to avenge the fact that he had been shot.

The channel returned to the show. He flipped to the cable news 
station and saw that they were covering both stories as well. He 
watched their coverage and saw that they didn't have any new 
information. It did show a helicopter landing at the hospital and 
Druids emerging from it. 

Stomach tightening, he sat back in his chair considering his 
situation. He figured that Chin had discovered that the old man in 
the dress was a Druid from the television in the waiting room. If he 
were in Chin's place, he would get a couple of the men and return 
here to take control over the operation. Chin would decide that by 
killing him, he could turn the body over to the homeless and make 
good his escape. 

Closing his eyes, he pictured how Chin would do it. He'd come in 
the room with two of the other men. The two men he had picked 
would turn to the desk and open fire without saying a word. Chin 
would be standing behind them ready to move in for the final kill 
while he was busy with the first two men. 

Opening the desk drawer, he took out his automatic and made sure 
that it was loaded. Getting up, he moved to a chair on the other 
side of the room. While he waited for the inevitable, he listened to 
the television for an explanation of the homeless people outside. 
No explanation was forthcoming.

Da Lee had stopped crying and was waiting for the next round of 
torture, but Wong hadn't shown. Shao Lee glanced over at the man 
guarding the door. He was pretty far away and she realized that she 
could talk to her sister without him hearing her. Putting a hand in 
front of her mouth to hide the fact that she was talking, she said, 
"Da Lee. Are you okay?"

Trying to keep her voice low, Da Lee answered, "What's going 
on?"

"I don't know. There's a guard at the door now," answered the 
younger sister. 

One of the girls seated next to Shao Lee whimpered, "How come 
we aren't having dinner? I'm hungry."

Without thinking of the consequences of her actions, Shao Lee 
glared at her as she shouted, "You're hungry? My sister is getting 
tortured!"

Expecting to get beaten, she was shocked when all that happened 
was that the guard shouted, "Shut up!"

Shao Lee looked down at the sewing machine. It took her a minute 
to realize that something else was odd. For the first time since she 
had arrived, no one was sewing. She looked around the room. The 
girls were sitting around looking over at the guard, at Da Lee, at 
the front office, and then back at the guard. Keeping her voice low, 
she asked, "What happened outside?"

Recalling that half second of freedom hurt, but Da Lee answered, 
"Wong caught me. Some old guy tried to stop him, but Wong shot 
him. Then he pulled me back in here."

"Why is there a guard at the door?" asked one of the other girls. It 
was clear that the guard wasn't watching them, but the door.

Shao Lee said, "There's something out there."

This was the ultimate in cruelty as far as Da Lee was concerned. 
Here she was hanging from a fence, in pain, tied up, and covered 
with wounds. Something was outside but it had shown up too late 
for her. She knew what it was. Its was hope. 


