Victoria Harbour was never quiet, not even after storms. The typhoon had scoured half the scaffolds into the water, drowned three tram substations, and left Kowloon pocked with mud like it had been shelled. But three nights later the city had already decided it needed to forgive itself. APEX plastered their logos across the harbourfront, promising "Resilience Festival." The government repeated the phrase as though it was a prayer. Volunteers plastered cinnabar talismans on tram doors, only for the damp to peel them down again, while corporate engineers rehearsed light shows over their heads, each side pretending not to notice the other.
It was supposed to be healing. Iris thought it looked more like a con. Corpos and something humane? Not a chance.
She shouldered through Fortress Hill streets toward Wan Chai with a grocery bag swinging from one hand. Cat litter. Noodles. Nothing noble. The crowd was heavier than it had any right to be on a wet Thursday. Families in plastic ponchos dragged kids by the hand, tourists blinked against drizzle, some guys with red armbands recited rules with the weary cadence of a catechism: No drones. No vehicles. Keep to the path.
"Pretty sure that includes me," Iris muttered.
The taped-up loudspeakers repeated it three languages deep. At the end, a polite AR banner scrolled above the road: Teleportation paths offline due to ritual activity. Which was corporate language for: monks don't want to cooperate.
Lanterns strung from poles swayed damp in the harbour wind. Drone swarms zipped in formation overhead, warming up for the evening show. They bloomed into lotus patterns, gold filigree shimmering against low cloud, then glitched when they passed over a tram pylon freshly daubed in vermilion. The lotus petals smeared into horoscope characters for three seconds before reforming. The crowd clapped like it was part of the script.
"Tourist trap with better graphics," Iris said around her cigarette.
The kitten wriggled inside the backpack, claws scritching canvas and tugging zipper downwards. A black nose poked out, whiskers twitching, eyes glowing faint violet under the neon spill. Its little head swivelled with every drone streak and hologram flare. When the swarm assembled into a dragon's spine arcing over the water, the kitten batted at the air and sneezed. Sparks prickled her shoulder blade through the pack.
"Oi, careful there, backseat driver."
The promenade swelled with sound. Incense smoke rolled from barge braziers, blown landward in green skeins. Food stalls screamed their own liturgy: squid skewers popping in oil, sugarcane presses grinding, rice steamers hissing. Somewhere deep, a troupe of drums began their pattern, slow and patient, like a heart being reminded of its job.
Iris cut sideways into the crush, the grocery bag knocking against knees, stick between her lips ember violet against drizzle. The crowd's attention was all up: holographic koi the size of buses vaulting out of the harbour, laser illuminating fake clouds. Children squealed, aunties prayed, phones filmed. No one noticed her. Except when they did — when their gaze caught her by accident, hung there a half-second too long, and slid away unsettled.
A security volunteer tried to herd her back behind a rope. She smiled sharp, blew smoke past his visor, and he decided there was space elsewhere. She threaded into the tide.
Above her, the koi turned in its programmed arc, but something bent. For half a beat it seemed to swivel its head toward her, and its eyes flashed violet. The same colour blinking up from the backpack. Iris felt the kitten paw her shoulder — pam — soft and insistent. The crowd roared with delight, convinced it was part of the show. A tourist's phone tried to tag her in the feed, fuzzed, and spat out a horoscope instead. The man frowned at the screen, then at her, and decided he didn't want to know.
She ground smoldering stick out on a railing. "Yeah, kid. They saw you too."
The harbourfront had density like scripture. Every layer contradicted another and none surrendered. Monks' chants fed through corporate speakers, flattened into nightclub bass. The bass blurred even the smell of frying squid from the food stalls. Ropes of damp prayer slips snapped like tired banners while AR billboards projected them back flawless. Police cordons split the flow, half for floats, half for bodies, both ending in bottlenecks. Above it all the city pulsed Resilience in Hanzi until the word lost its shape.
Iris just wanted to get home before the noodles soaked through the bag. She tried a side lane; blocked. Tried to skirt under a float scaffold; volunteers barked. She lit another stick and let the smoke tell her she wasn't moving anywhere until this was done.
That was when her comm buzzed.
Not spam. Not Kwan. Not Wei. A clean header she hadn't seen since Cho's days. APEX seal. No pleasantries. Just words:
Iris, this is Mattew Wong. You owe me one, remember? I want to collect. Package stalled at West Pier Float Station. Deliver to Harbourfront Tower Gate 6. Seven C Delta.
Her laugh cut sharp and bitter through the incense. A man glanced at her like he'd heard something impolite and then looked away fast. She jammed the comm back into her pocket, lit smoke deep, and let the ember flare. Matt Wong was a corpo, saved her ass once. Didn't ask for anything in return back then.
"Of course," she said. "Only way out of a festival's through it."
The koi vaulted overhead again, and the harbour applauded its own reflection. Iris spat smoke into the neon air and pushed deeper into the crowd. A boy nearly stepped on her boot; his mother yanked him back and muttered a charm under her breath.
West Pier squatted ahead like scaffolding that had remembered it once wanted to be a pier. Prayer ropes sagged under the rain, slips plastered damp against the scaffolds. A kiosk had been nailed together from laminate and resignation, its AR skin promising SEAMLESS LOGISTICS FOR A SEAMLESS NIGHT. Behind it, grounded drones sulked in racks, their bellies taped with brush-stroked NO-FLY charms. The glyphs twitched each time the loudspeakers pumped another corporate hymn.
The clerk inside the kiosk looked fourteen and already bored of adulthood. She lifted her scanner; it coughed static as soon as it brushed Iris's jacket. The girl frowned, tried again, frowned harder.
"Your code isn't—"
"It's never," Iris cut in. "Seven-cee-Delta."
The girl's eyes shifted, reading instructions only she could see. She produced a heat-shielded envelope, black with a scarlet seal drilled into tiny sigils. You could smell the money in the glue. "Sign."
The panel spat six versions of Iris's name before grudgingly settling on one. Green light blinked in surrender. Envelope warm against her ribs, she tightened her pack straps and turned back into the crush.
The first bottleneck found her with drumbeats. A lion-dance float nosed into the lane, no temple relic but a corporate mascot stitched in platinum thread. Its AR-hinged jaw spat fire when the drums hit. The boys under the head moved too precisely, haptic bands jerking their limbs. Tradition remote-controlled.
Handlers held the rope line taut. Phones rose. The alley she needed lay just beyond the float's flank. She folded under the rope, pivoted in the lion's shadow, came up clean on the far side.
The lion's jaw dipped at her. Or the program told it to. But the AR flame hiccupped, as if the code couldn't agree what she was. Handlers tapped wrists, frowning. No one looked at her.
The sky thickened with petals. Drone swarms loosed blossom projections, cones crossing until the promenade became a snow globe. Depth warped. People stopped to film. Iris kept to anchor points: the edge of a bollard, the seam of a curb, the leg of a sugarcane press. Petals clung to her jacket a second too long before dissolving.
The ferry concourse spat a tide of latecomers, umbrellas and raincoats clogging every inch. A warden blocked her, tablet raised, voice flat: "No passage during petal sequence. Please observe—"
She smiled with all her teeth. Shouldered past. His feet turned a fraction more than he meant, and the crowd opened a seam. She slid through.
The envelope thudded against her ribs. The kitten shifted in the backpack, claws scratching canvas, impatient. Iris exhaled smoke through her nose.
"Yeah, yeah. Still on time."
The kitten's claws dug sharp into her shoulder. MOVE. The thought wasn't hers. Above her, the koi's hologram glitched once more. This time it didn't reform. It stared straight at her and didn't look away.