The Ghost at Rest
The bruise along Mae Ling's left ribs bloomed purple-black against her pale skin, a souvenir from the Macau job that had concluded eighteen hours earlier. She pressed her fingertips gently against the tender flesh, wincing as she assessed the damage in the full-length mirror of her bathroom. The target had been quicker than anticipated—a former Triad enforcer turned legitimate businessman who still retained his street instincts. His elbow had found her ribs during their brief, violent dance on the forty-second floor of the Grand Lisboa. Still, he was dead, and she was merely bruised. In her line of work, that constituted an unqualified success.
Mae Ling pulled on a soft cotton tank top, the fabric settling carefully over her injuries, and padded barefoot through her Mid-Levels apartment. The space was a study in contradictions—minimalist Scandinavian furniture juxtaposed against traditional Chinese artwork, floor-to-ceiling windows offering a panoramic view of Victoria Harbour while heavy blackout curtains stood ready to provide complete privacy at a moment's notice. To any casual observer, it was the home of a successful tech consultant or finance professional. They would never suspect that behind the innocuous bookshelf in the study lay her true sanctuary.
She pressed her palm against a specific section of the wall, and the biometric scanner hidden beneath the paint read her handprint. The bookshelf swung inward with a whisper-quiet mechanical hum, revealing the room that contained the tools of her trade. The armory was compact but comprehensive—a climate-controlled space no larger than a walk-in closet, yet containing enough firepower to outfit a small military unit. Handguns hung in precise rows: a suppressed Walther P99, her beloved Sig Sauer P226, a compact Glock 19 for close work, and several others, each maintained to perfection. Rifles occupied the far wall—a disassembled Barrett M82 for extreme long-range work, an HK416 for situations requiring more aggressive persuasion, and her personal favorite, a custom-modified Remington 700 that had never failed her in seven years of service.
But tonight, Mae Ling wasn't here for weapons. She moved to the workshop area, where her laptop displayed detailed schematics of the Grand Lisboa's security systems—research that was now obsolete but represented weeks of meticulous preparation. She closed the files and began her post-mission ritual, cleaning and organizing her equipment with surgical care. The ceramic knife she'd used to end the target's life went into an ultrasonic cleaner, its blade disappearing into the bubbling solution. Her tactical gear—black clothing designed to blend with shadows, lightweight body armor, communication equipment—was inspected, cleaned, and returned to its designated place.
The ritual was meditative, a way to transition from the heightened alertness required for her work back to the mundane rhythms of civilian life. Each piece of equipment told a story: the scar on her tactical vest from a job in Bangkok where everything had gone sideways, the modified grip on her Sig Sauer that accommodated her smaller hands, the collection of false passports representing a dozen different identities she could assume at a moment's notice. Mae Ling ran her fingers along these familiar objects, grounding herself in their reality after the surreal violence of the previous night.
Satisfied that everything was in order, she sealed the armory and made her way to the kitchen. The space was modern and well-appointed, though she rarely used it for elaborate cooking. Tonight called for something simple and comforting. She filled her electric kettle with filtered water and selected a tin of premium oolong from her collection—a gift from a grateful client in Taiwan who had never known her real name or face. While the water heated, she prepared a light snack: rice crackers topped with aged cheese and thin slices of Chinese sausage, arranged on a small ceramic plate with the same attention to detail she brought to planning an assassination.
The kettle's soft whistle announced that the water had reached the perfect temperature. Mae Ling warmed her teapot with a splash of hot water, swirled it around, then discarded it before adding the tea leaves. She poured the water in a slow, steady stream, watching the leaves unfurl and release their amber essence. The familiar ritual was soothing, a connection to her grandmother's teachings from childhood—one of the few pure memories from her life before she became the Ghost of Hong Kong.
Carrying her tea and snack to the living room, Mae Ling settled into the corner of her oversized sofa, pulling a cashmere throw around her shoulders. The bruise on her ribs protested as she adjusted her position, but the pain was manageable—a reminder that she was alive, that she had once again emerged victorious from a deadly game. She reached for the remote control and navigated to her streaming service, scrolling past action movies and crime dramas with a wry smile. After spending her professional life immersed in violence and deception, her entertainment preferences ran toward the absurd and innocent.
She selected an episode of "Are You Being Served?" from her carefully curated collection of British sitcoms. The show was delightfully ridiculous—a relic from the 1970s featuring the staff of a fictional department store and their endless double entendres and misunderstandings. Mae Ling had discovered it during a recovery period after a particularly difficult job in London, and it had become her guilty pleasure. There was something deeply satisfying about watching Mrs. Slocombe fuss over her cat while Captain Peacock strutted about with pompous authority, their petty concerns a universe away from the life-and-death stakes of her own existence.
As the familiar theme music played, Mae Ling sipped her tea and felt the tension in her shoulders begin to ease. On screen, Mr. Humphries was explaining to a confused customer why the men's department didn't carry a particular style of trouser, his camp delivery and theatrical gestures drawing a genuine laugh from the assassin. She had killed three people in the past month—a corrupt politician in Singapore, a human trafficker in Manila, and now the former Triad enforcer in Macau—yet here she was, giggling at a decades-old British comedy like any other woman enjoying a quiet evening at home.
The contradiction didn't trouble her. Mae Ling had long ago made peace with the duality of her existence. By day—or more accurately, by the periods between jobs—she was simply another Hong Kong professional: well-educated, financially comfortable, culturally sophisticated. She attended art gallery openings, practiced tai chi in the park, and maintained cordial relationships with her neighbors. But when the Broker called with a contract, she transformed into something else entirely: a shadow that moved through the world's dark corners, dispensing death with clinical precision.
Her phone, resting on the coffee table beside her tea cup, suddenly illuminated with an incoming message. The display showed only a number she recognized—the Broker's secure line.
She glanced at the device but made no move to pick it up. On television, Mrs. Slocombe was having another crisis involving her pussy, and the studio audience was erupting in laughter. The message notification pulsed insistently, but she ignored it, taking another sip of her oolong and settling deeper into the sofa cushions.
The Broker was her primary contact with the shadowy network that employed her services. She had never met him in person—she wasn't entirely certain the Broker was male, as their communications were conducted entirely through encrypted text messages and voice-altered phone calls. What she did know was that the Broker had an uncanny ability to identify targets who needed killing and clients willing to pay handsomely for the service. Politicians who had betrayed their constituents, criminals who preyed on the innocent, corporate executives who valued profit over human life—the Broker's contracts always came with detailed justifications that allowed Mae Ling to maintain the fiction that she was some sort of avenging angel rather than simply a killer for hire.
The phone buzzed twice more in quick succession. Mae Ling's eyes flicked toward it briefly before returning to the television screen, where Mr. Lucas was attempting to demonstrate a camping tent to increasingly bewildered customers. She knew the messages would be marked urgent—they always were. In the Broker's world, every contract was a matter of life and death, every delay potentially catastrophic.
But Mae Ling had learned the importance of boundaries, of maintaining spaces in her life that remained untouched by the violence that defined her profession. Tonight was one of those spaces. Her body ached from the Macau job, her mind was still processing the split-second decisions that had kept her alive, and her soul—if she still possessed such a thing—craved the simple pleasure of mindless entertainment. The Broker's urgent contract could wait until morning. Whatever crisis demanded her particular skills would still exist in eight hours, and she would be better equipped to handle it after a full night's rest.
After the fourth buzz, Mae Ling reached over and turned the device face-down, muffling the notification light. On screen, Captain Peacock was delivering a pompous lecture about proper department store etiquette while Young Mr. Grace nodded approvingly from his wheelchair. The familiar rhythms of the show washed over her like a warm bath, each predictable joke and recurring gag a small comfort in a life defined by uncertainty and danger.
She thought about her grandmother, who had raised her after her parents died in a car accident when Mae Ling was twelve. The old woman had been a teacher, devoted to literature and traditional Chinese culture, who had filled their small apartment with books and the scent of jasmine tea. Mae Ling touched the cross that hung on a silver chain around her neck—the cross her grandmother had worn every day until her death eight years ago—and wondered what that gentle woman would have thought of her granddaughter's chosen profession.
Her grandmother had practiced what she called "practical faith"—attending Catholic mass on Sundays while maintaining a small Buddhist shrine in their bedroom, lighting incense for ancestors while reciting the rosary. She spoke of karma as readily as she did divine forgiveness, believing that the universe kept its own accounts while God offered redemption to those who sought it. "Every action creates ripples," she used to say, "but the water can always be made clear again." Would such a woman have condemned the lives Mae Ling had taken, or would she have somehow found justification in the careful selection of her targets—the corrupt, the cruel, those who preyed upon the innocent? Mae Ling suspected her grandmother would have focused not on the killing itself, but on the intention behind it, the cosmic balance of removing evil from the world. It was a comforting thought, though Mae Ling wasn't entirely convinced she believed it herself.
Of course, her grandmother had never known what her beloved granddaughter would become—one of Asia's most feared assassins. To the end, she had believed Mae Ling worked in international consulting, traveling frequently for business meetings and client presentations.
The lie had been easy to maintain.
Her legitimate cover identity was thoroughly documented—complete with tax records, professional references, and a modest but respectable income. It explained her comfortable lifestyle without raising suspicions about its true source.
On television, the episode was reaching its climax as the department store staff dealt with yet another crisis involving a difficult customer and a misunderstood product demonstration. Mae Ling found herself genuinely invested in the outcome, despite having seen this particular episode at least a dozen times.
There was something deeply satisfying about the show's formulaic structure. The way each episode followed the same basic pattern while introducing just enough variation to keep things interesting. It was the opposite of her professional life, where no two jobs were ever the same and the slightest deviation from the plan could prove fatal.
Her phone buzzed a fourth time, and Mae Ling felt a flicker of irritation. The Broker was nothing if not persistent, but tonight she was off duty. She had earned this respite through years of flawless service, through contracts completed without a single failure or blown cover. The criminal underworld knew her only as the Ghost of Hong Kong—a phantom who appeared without warning, eliminated her target with surgical precision, and vanished without a trace. Police files contained dozens of unsolved murders that bore her signature: clean kills with no witnesses, no evidence, and no apparent motive beyond professional execution.
But the Ghost of Hong Kong was currently wearing comfortable pajamas and laughing at a British sitcom from the 1970s. The duality no longer seemed strange to her—it was simply the reality of her existence, as natural as breathing. She had compartmentalized her life with the same methodical precision she brought to planning an assassination, creating spaces where Mae Ling the woman could exist separately from Mae Ling the killer.
The episode concluded with the typical resolution: misunderstandings cleared up, dignity restored (more or less), and the promise that tomorrow would bring fresh opportunities for chaos and confusion. Mae Ling smiled as the credits rolled, already looking forward to the next episode. She had nowhere to be tomorrow morning, no pressing obligations beyond eventually responding to the Broker's increasingly urgent messages.
For now, she was content to exist in this bubble of domestic tranquility, nursing her bruises and her tea while the neon lights of Hong Kong painted rainbow patterns across her living room walls.
As the next episode began, Mae Ling pulled the cashmere throw more tightly around her shoulders and settled in for another half hour of blissful normalcy. The phone continued to buzz periodically, each message presumably more urgent than the last, but she had made her decision. Tonight belonged to her, not to the Broker or the shadowy clients who required her services. Tonight, she was just another woman enjoying a quiet evening at home, and that was exactly how she intended to keep it.
The Ghost of Hong Kong could rise again tomorrow.
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A story featuring Mae Ling is included in the Chillers and Thrillers anthology, now available at DriveThruRPG and DriveThruFiction!
