Li Hao-Chang, standing in front of a colorful array of fresh-caught fish, bargains with a Cantonese peasant over the price of yellow-tailed snapper. Where the Wharf tapers out, and the harbor is too shallow for the larger trawlers, the fish market thrives over a patch of old concrete and dirt.
The peasant finally offers enough yuan to satisfy Li.
"Xie xie," Li thanks the peasant, wrapping the fish up in old newspaper. The edge of the newspaper catches Li's eye.
Signals From Outer Space, it reads.
Li doesn't much care. All men can be awed by discovery, for Li there is selling fish. He has to make enough to pay rent, to eat, and to save. If he doesn't sell enough fish for rent, the local thugs come over to beat him up. If he doesn't make enough to eat, his wife goes hungry, and if he can't save, he'll never be able to leave Macau and the smell of fish that seems to taint his life.
The frenzied noise dips slightly near the stall. Li looks up from tossing ice on the fish to see what it is. A dark figure in a duster, moving through the fish stalls with a quiet confidence.
Pepper.
The man called Pepper stops and sniffs. Li knows the air he sniffs is alive with fish, and street sewer, and sweat. And something else. On the edge of all the sandpapery shark and still croaking grouper is the smell of fear.
Li Hao-Chang watches Pepper carefully. Li stands nervously behind his untreated plywood table glistening with fish juices, and keeps his eyes averted.
Maybe the mercenary senses something, maybe his reflexes are keyed up beyond belief, a soup of tailored chemicals thudding through his bloodstreams. Maybe he is about to reach beneath the heavy folds of his dark gray oilskin duster and pull out a massive shotgun.
Pepper's steely gray eyes roll over the street and bore into Li Hao Chang.
"Afternoon, Hao-Chang."
His voice is as artificially gray as his eyes. All are carefully designed with respect in mind. Li knows Pepper sure as hell isn't here to buy grouper.
"Afternoon, Mr. Pepper."
Li is careful to keep conversation at a minimum. Pepper is usually not out in the street to chat.
Pepper looks around the surrounding stalls, his presence cutting though the babble of the crowd. The kaleidoscope of multi-racial faces washes past Li's table, their differences slight in comparison to Pepper's own contrasting strangeness. Rastafarian mercenaries do not seem to belong in any landscape, let alone Macau. His leather duster hangs low, the soft rain running off in rivulets and his half dreadlocks are tied back into a ponytail.
Li notices slight movement in the far distance, the crowd jostled by someone, and his ears catch the distant delayed puff of a silenced weapon. Pepper's body jerks sideways, and he crumples to the sidewalk. A peasant hurries past, ducking. The man who steps forward out of the crowd pockets his gun, then leans over. Li can hear the distinctive British lilt.
"Oy. He's down."
A silver armored Rolls Royce with tinted windows quickly parts the wave of panicked fish buyers. The rear doors open forward, and the mercenary is pulled across the cement, up into the car. The Brit has enough grafted muscle to have trouble getting into the Rolls.
Li looks down at spotted grouper and waits for the Rolls to leave. When he looks back up there is only an empty sidewalk in front of his table.
"Ni hao," he mutters to himself. The sidewalk is not entirely empty. A small disk lies near a puddle of thickening blood, already rust colored against the dirty cracked concrete of the wharf.
Li darts out to pick it up. Pepper haunts the wharf regularly. If Li does him a favor and saves the disk, then maybe Pepper will do him a favor.
The disk, covered in green symbols Li doesn't understand, makes a 'snick' sound as he picks it up. He looks down at his finger to see a point of blood, and thinks maybe he has cut his finger on a piece of glass.
Li Hao-Chang returns to his stall and puts the case into his purse. Maybe Pepper will pay him yuan for the case.
If Pepper returns, he thinks, dabbing at the cut with a piece of newspaper.
But Li has faith in Pepper. Pepper gives off a mystique of calculated invincibility. Pepper walks the Wharf, and the Wharf stays away from him. All the local gangs, no matter what color. Tan Italian, pale American, each learn Pepper's skills the hard way. They never try again.
Blacks are particularly nervous around him. Pepper is chocolate, with a white's gray eyes. He shows no ties to skin, he kills black as efficiently as white or any other shade. They call Pepper the black ghost.
The black ghost, because after every battle, no matter the injuries, Pepper comes back to life. How many back-up blood pumps are laced through his torso? How much artificial adrenaline is produced by small chemical factories in his stomach? Are his eyes really spliced hawk gene? Rumors trickle.
Li Hao-Chang has seen this scene before. Pepper will be back.
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