I don’t want to say that The Downfall concerts were becoming boring, because every single performance was different in a lot of ways and they always put on a great show, but honestly, I was kinda getting over it. Yes, they were different, but they were also sort of the same. Different intros, different playlists and different banter, sure, but it was still the same three (plus three touring band members) performing from the same collection of songs.

The indoor stadiums they were playing in all looked basically the same, too, and the backstage areas were all alike. I hadn’t been to nearly as many of the tour dates as Angela had, but if I wasn’t there to support Emmy and Angela, I would have flown back home and skipped the rest of the tour.

The Friday night show was good, of course, but I found that my attention wandered to things like the laser light show, or watching the cameramen trying to be as unobtrusive as possible while filming the performers onstage, or wondering about the logistics of packing all the equipment, even including the stage, from one country to the next when there was such distance (and oceans) in between. The European tour had been easy- just load everything on trucks and drive to the next city, right? But this leg must involve trucks carrying everything to planes, then loading it on trucks again, making for a much more complex voyage.

So, yeah, I was hardly paying any attention to the music at all. Angela seemed to be, though. Every time I glanced her way she had her eyes glued to the figures on the stage. More often than not she sang along with the songs, too, completely wrapped up in the concert.

She’d been to a lot more of the stops on this tour than I had (well, I mean, she’d been to all of them, right? But me, only four cities so far) and yet she still enjoyed the shows, so maybe it was just me.

There was no official afterparty that night, so the entire entourage made their way to the rooftop bar at our hotel for a less formal celebration of another successful show. Since there was no need to meet and greet anybody, the three of us skipped the whole thing and relaxed in our suite, getting to bed early.

“This is the rock and roll dream, is it not?” Emmy mused when I pointed out that we were in bed before midnight for once.

“Em,” Angela said, propping herself up on one elbow. She reached down with her other hand and moved a strand of Emmy’s white hair from her forehead. “You are so amazing when you perform. I love to watch you on stage.”

Emmy smiled, grasping Angela’s hand and kissing it. “That means very much to me,” she said.

I failed to mention that I’d been bored during the show that evening.

The training the next day wasn’t nearly as punishing as I’d expected. The kung-fu type of diverting incoming blows rather than straight-up blocking them was the key, and the value of the technique became obvious quickly.

All the drills with reversing grip on the fly came to make sense, too, when switching to a reverse edge-out grip allowed a strong block move to be followed with a quick counterattack.

Of course, the challenge was that I was being attacked by two weapons, so it became a game of feeling the flow of the timing and anticipating it. As Sgt Choi and I worked together, we got faster and faster. As the speed picked up it all began to make sense to me. I could see the sticks following predictable paths that simply couldn’t be changed that easily. Understanding the rhythm meant that I could predict it, and once I found myself ahead of the beat I found I could dictate the flow of the dance.

“That was incredible,” Sgt Choi gasped when we finally stopped. He fell back against the wall, panting as he wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “When Mr Han told me you were fast, I had no idea!”

“She no’ jus’ fas’,” Mr Han said, nodding. “She like Superma’.”

“I never would have believed it,” Sgt Choi admitted, still breathing hard.

When Elizabeth arrived to open the gym for the morning, she gave her father and me a disapproving look as she stood aside to let Sgt Choi out the door. She didn’t say anything as she turned on all the lights and made sure the place was ready for the day, though.

“Elizabeth doesn’t approve of my friends,” Mr Han said with a chuckle. “She thinks I’m too old to be involving myself in these silly spy games.”

“Are you?” I asked.

“Not yet, no,” he said. “I’ll rest when I’m dead.” Then, changing the subject, he said, “We only have one more day of training before you leave. Is there anything you want to concentrate on in our remaining time together?”

“What do you see as my weak spots?” I asked. “You’re the expert.”

“Bullets,” Mr Han answered. “None of this is going to matter the moment someone pulls a gun on you.”

“I’ve done a lot of training on weapon stripping and control techniques, but that only works if someone is close enough,” I agreed.

“I have complete confidence that if any threat gets within your range, you will neutralize them quickly. It will take an exceptional combatant to bring you down,” Mr Han said.

Pleased to hear that, I asked, “Is there any chance we could get in some multiple assailant work?”

Mr Han looked thoughtful for a moment, then agreed. “I can bring in some guys and we can work on that tomorrow,” he said, thinking about it.

The show that night kept my attention quite a bit better, and that was mainly because it was a lot more energetic than the previous two nights had been. It started with the traditional improv intro, this time kick-started by Emmy. She came out onstage and slung her guitar strap over her shoulder, looking out over the capacity crowd without saying a word. She just stood there for a few minutes, listening to the crowd, which was much more boisterous than it had been the two earlier shows there in Singapore.

Finally satisfied, Emmy took a guitar pick from her pocket and held it as if she were about to play, but then tossed it with a quick flick of the wrist out to about the fifth row. Taking a second pick from her pocket, she strummed a quick power chord, then launched into a blistering free-form solo, her guitar distorted so much it sounded like a chainsaw. She played fast and with passion, making such an amazing spectacle of it that I barely even registered when Lee and Jackson joined in. The three of them played it furious and intense, but then eventually Emmy let her guitar fade away. She was followed by Lee, leaving only Jackson playing his bass.

It didn’t take long before the bass line simplified but doubled, if that makes any sense. Of course I recognized that bass line right away, and judging by the crowd’s reaction, plenty of others in the full house did, too.

Emmy resumed the heavily distorted guitar but now playing with a metal slide on her finger, giving the chainsaw a slinky sound as she played that old, classic Pink Floyd line.

Lee’s kick drums did that familiar ‘banging on the door’ thing as Emmy’s guitar soared through the long instrumental.

The music shifted up a gear when Emmy stepped up to the mic and belted out, “One of these days I’m going to cut you into little pieces!” The guitar turned frenzied, and the drumming turned intense and powerful. Jackson kept up that feverish but simple double bass line as the guitar slid its way through the rest of the angry, driven song, eventually fading away to silence.

The crowd was stunned at first, but then broke into roaring applause as they recovered from the emotional wringer the music had just put them through.

“Thank you very much!” Jackson said. “We’ve been wanting to play that song for a long time now, and this is the first time it seemed to fit the mood. We’re feeling it tonight, me, Lee and Emmy, and we are gonna to bring it good and hard!”

Lee counted out on his sticks, and the band launched into ‘Snakes In The Grass’ from their second album. It was the first time I’d ever seen them do it live, and the shredding, angry guitar that starts the song came as a surprise. The song had never gotten any airplay to speak of, and leading off a show with a cover tune and then a deep cut seemed like a strange but bold beginning to the night’s playlist.

Looking around, it seemed that most of the crowd around us knew the words to ‘Snakes’ and were singing along just fine, so maybe it had gotten a lot of airplay regionally. I’d never really paid any attention to The Downfall’s sales or streaming numbers, so it could well be that ‘Snakes’ was a huge hit in Singapore.

The rest of the playlist was equally unexpected. Sure, they played a lot of their big hits, but overall the show was mostly lesser-known, more intense songs from The Downfall’s catalog. Of course I knew all of them, but pretty much everybody in that audience did, too, judging by how they were singing along. When they finally finished the set with ‘Killer In The Dark’, it sure seemed as if everybody in our part of the stadium had gotten their money’s worth.

Back at the hotel for another low-key unofficial afterparty, Stephanie found me looking out over the harbor, away from everybody else.

“Hey, babe,” she said, “Here you go,” she said, handing me a drink.

“Thanks, Steph,” I said. “Looking forward to Australia?” I asked, sipping the Old Fashioned.

“I like Australia,” Stephanie replied. “I mean, I like it here, too, but it’s too hot and sweaty for me, you know?”

“You used to like hot and sweaty,” I said with a grin.

“Leah,” Stephanie sighed. “I know we were just kids, but sometimes I wish…”

“They say that life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans,” I said.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Stephanie agreed. After a long moment, she said, “I get to spend a couple more days here, making sure everything is buttoned up before I can get on a plane for Sydney. It’s going to seem lonely without everybody here.”

“I can’t believe how hard you’re working on this tour,” I said, reaching over and rubbing her back. “Have I told you how proud I am of you?”

“You’re proud of me?” Stephanie asked, surprised.

“Of course I am,” I admitted. “I see you doing all this amazing work, you know, and doing unbelievably well at it, kicking ass and taking names… Of course I’m proud of you. You’re amazing.”

She smiled up at me and said, “That means a lot. More than… Well, it means a whole lot. And I guess you have a right to be proud of me. I mean, it was you that convinced me I could do whatever I wanted to do, you know. The end of senior year at FHS, when you tutored me and worked my ass off so I could finish the year strong. You did it, Leah. You were so convinced that I could do it that I just had no choice but to go along and believe you.”

“You put in the work, Steph. I might have helped, but in the end it was all you.”

“Maybe, but you were the one who was so sure I could do it. You showed me that I was smart enough, and with hard work I could do anything. You know I made the Dean’s list all but one semester at State? I did it because I knew I was smart enough, and did the work,” Stephanie said.

“I didn’t know that. That’s awesome,” I said, really meaning it.

“Then, working with The Sons,” Stephanie said. “They’d be the first to tell you that without my help, they’d still be playing bars in North County for a couple of hundred bucks a night, working day jobs to make ends meet. It was me, once they asked me to manage them, that got them to tighten their shit up, and it was me that got them their gigs. Me. And you know what? I was making it up as I was going along, reading everything I could about managing bands, and it was me making the phone calls, and it was me making sure they got paid better than they ever had in their lives.”

“I remember the show down by the airport,” I said, smiling at the memory of Stephanie demanding her money from the club owner.

“It was a real trial by fire, that’s for sure,” she said, looking out at the lights of the city. “But here I am now, managing one of the biggest rock bands on an international tour.”

“You said you’ll be making good money off this tour?” I asked.

“Yes, I will,” Stephanie agreed. “That’s why I’m working my ass off. This tour is gonna pay off my house in Silver Lake and then some. Do you have any idea what that means, for me to own my own home free and clear at twenty-four years old?” Then with a wry smile, she said, “Yeah, I guess you probably do.”

“It’s different, Steph. What you’ve done is a lot more impressive to me than me buying London penthouses and whatever. I was handed a ton of money to play with. You weren’t,” I said. “You’ve had to earn every dime.”

“Says the billionaire,” Stephanie chuckled.

“You know I’m not actually a billionaire, right?”

“Close enough,” Stephanie said with a shrug. “After this tour gets tallied up and I get my cut, I’m gonna be an actual millionaire- for a little while, anyway, until I pay off my mortgage.”

“You know that still counts, right?” I replied. “Equity in real estate counts towards your wealth. So if you have a million dollars in your bank account or a million dollars in property, you’re still a millionaire.”

“I know,” Stephanie said. “But when I see all those zeroes on my bank statement…”

I chuckled as I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and pulled her in for a side hug. “I suspect that you’ll see a lot more of them as time goes by, Steph. I’m just as confident of your abilities now as I was back in high school.”

Stephanie put her arm around my lower back and returned the side hug. “Thanks, babe. That means everything, coming from you.”

Training with Mr Han the next morning was challenging. He had a bunch of guys to help out, and we started out with two of them working against me, then three, then four. As it turns out, I could do well against two, was about even on fighting three and getting away unscathed, but against four I would get ‘killed’ every time. Sure, I’d take out most of the attackers, but it was inevitable that at least one would get in a fatal strike, as evidenced by the red chalk on my sweats.

The tide turned when Mr Han lifted the restriction on using kicks and bare-hand strikes. If I was allowed to use all the tools in my arsenal (and the attackers were, as well), it turned out that I could usually beat four, only suffering non-debilitating cuts and slashes. I never managed to get through a round unmarked, to my regret.

Mr Han thanked the guys as they left, giving us about twenty minutes before Elizabeth would come to open the place to the regulars.

“Leah Farmer,” he said as he ditched his own white sweats, revealing his usual gym clothes underneath. Toweling himself off, he said, “When Grant Henry told me you were a killing machine, I didn’t know what to think. I have worked closely with the man and respect his opinions highly. I didn’t take what he said lightly, but it was difficult to square the image that he had conveyed with what I saw when he brought you in. When I got a better look at you, though, I saw you had the eyes of a killer.”

Unsure how to respond to that, I kept silent as I finished changing out of my white sweats, tossing them in the same hamper as Mr Han had done with his.

“Working with you was a pleasure. I can’t recall anyone that I have trained who listened and applied what I told them as quickly and easily as you do. And your speed! You’re as fast as anyone I’ve ever worked with, but most really quick fighters are small guys- nobody your size should be able to move the way you do. You have such incredible reach in comparison with any normal person that you can dictate any close conflict as you will.”

I sat down on the mat to stretch while continuing to give Mr Han my full attention. This was my report card, after all. A week of busting my ass for the guy came down to this.

“That speed, your reach and your surprising strength and fitness, all those things are weapons in your arsenal, but really, what sets you truly in the realm of the elite is your ability to understand and lead the dance. Sgt Choi is a champion kali fighter. He is truly as good as it gets, but with just two days of working with him you reached the ability to make him fight on your terms. Kali is a very effective technique, but in your last bout with him he could hardly do anything against you. Do you know what he told me? He said that if it came to a real fight with you, he would run away. Just run away. He had no confidence that he could disable you before receiving a fatal knife wound. And he’s not wrong. I would do the same.”

“But when we go at it, you get me as often as not,” I protested.

“Yes, but I never, ever come away clean,” he countered. “When I train the special forces in the military, I can always score fatal injuries on them with no more than superficial cuts in return, but that is simply not the case against you. This morning you consistently defeated me and three of my best students. Do you understand how ridiculous that is? Nobody should be able to do that.”

“Honestly, working with you this week has been incredible for me,” I told him. “Just a few days of training and I could feel the improvement in my technique. Pivoting from blocking to deflecting was huge for me, and to be fair to Sgt Choi, if I hadn’t had that time with you I wouldn’t have been able to counter his sticks nearly so well. If anything, it hammered home to me the idea that sometimes the best counter isn’t to simply meet it head-on.”

Nodding his head, Mr Han said, “Yes, I could see the transformation in your style happen right before my eyes. And that is exactly what I mean- you learn and adapt astonishingly quickly. I want you to keep developing that mindset. You know what else I want?” Mr Han asked as if it had suddenly occurred to him. “I want you to come back in a year for more training. Give me two or three weeks next time.”

“I could do that,” I said, thinking about it. “What would it cost me?”

“I would want you to train my men with me. That’s it. I work with you, and in turn, you work with my students at the academy.”

“You have a deal,” I said, standing up to shake his hand. “And now for the payment for all this,” I said, indicating the gym in general, but he knew what I meant. He nodded he understood and was ready to listen, so I told him all about the Night Children.

I gave him a rough history lesson and explained that there were currently six ancient nations, more or less limited to the region around the Mediterranean and Near East, plus of course the new nation that Emmy and I were building in the Americas. I explained that there had been Night Children nations farther east, but that they had been wiped out long, long ago. Since the nations were basically static, there was no real move to return back to those regions lost to their people.

“There are probably some strays in the bigger cities in Asia, like in the Americas, but no large, established populations,” I said.

“If you were to guess, how many do you think might be here in Singapore?” Mr Han asked.

“Well, realistically, we have two things going on. It’s a big city, of what, nearly five million people, right? So there should be a handful. Maybe a half dozen? Maybe ten? Probably not any more than that. But the flip side, you guys have really strict immigration controls and a very significant police presence. Adding to that is the physical difficulty of getting here since it’s an island… This makes me think that maybe there used to be some but they might have left as the island became more developed.”

Mr Han nodded, thinking about what I’d just said. “There might be a few in Kuala Lumpur, then,” he agreed.

“That would be my guess, too. It would be really hard to hide in the shadows here, but there it might be a lot easier,” I confirmed.

“This is very interesting,” Mr Han said, thinking about it. “But why should I care? What does this information benefit me, or my country?”

“Well, here’s the interesting part,” I said. “And I’m only telling you this because your government, while remarkably tight-assed, isn’t aggressive. They also don’t seem to be oppressing the people, which, to be honest, is rare in this world.”

Mr Han smiled, showing that he agreed with what I’d just said.

“Night Children, besides knowing how to hide really well, have a couple of other features that could potentially make them very valuable to a government. The first is that they can see in the dark. I mean, see in the full dark. If you want a demonstration, I can arrange it, but trust me- they can do it. The second is that if they’ve had the traditional training, they can move silently. Again, I can arrange a demonstration, but it’s true. They can move more quietly than a cat. So the obvious answer to your question is that they could make exceptional, well, spies or whatever. Anywhere you would need someone who can sneak like nobody’s business, they’d be ideal.”

Looking thoughtful, Mr Han said, “So you’re telling me this so that my government can recruit some of these Night Children for our intelligence services before our enemies do?”

“Now that you know about them and the others in the region don’t, that gives you just that window of opportunity. I’d be willing to loan you an expert in finding and recruiting Night Children, but only if you’re serious about it. I’d probably start in Kuala Lumpur, as you said, and Hong Kong, Macau, maybe Manila… places like that. If you found them and offered them citizenship here and a decent life, you would be well ahead of the other nations in the region,” I explained.

“And you say that this information will be widely known soon?” Mr Han asked.

“Well, their basic existence, sure, but the whole seeing in the dark thing, that’s a pretty closely guarded secret. That is never going to become widely known. That’s the real attraction for someone like you,” I replied.

Looking thoughtful, he asked, “How long ago were the Asian Night Children wiped out?”

“They were hunted down and wiped out in the thirteenth century by orders of Genghis Khan and his sons, from what I’ve been told. Pretty much killed every one east of the Urals. Since the Night Children have never been seafarers, there was no escape.”

“Interesting,” Mr Han said. “And you have proof of all this?”

“Yes. Well, not the ancient history part. Although it was well documented, it’s still just written accounts, right? But the current stuff, sure. Like I said, I can call Emmy’s bodyguard down here and have him show you he can move quieter than a cat and can see in the complete dark, if you want.”

“And they’re all black-skinned like him and Emmy Lascaux? Why don’t we ever find any?” Mr Han asked, inadvertently revealing that he’d had us watched, or maybe done it himself, since I’d never mentioned Tiny before.

Just then Elizabeth opened the gym door, ending our conversation.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “Come to Los Angeles in a couple of weeks after Emmy’s tour is over and I can arrange all the proof and demonstrations you could want and introduce you to a bunch of them. We can talk about how you can find and recruit them from the regional cities here if you think you want to go that route,” I suggested.

We exchanged email addresses and WhatsApp numbers and I left, not bothering with the usual two hours of fitness work. Mr Han had already admitted that I was much more fit than anybody I was ever likely to go up against, so I should just keep doing what I was already doing.

Emmy and Angela were already packed by the time I got back to the hotel, so we had a nice leisurely brunch before leaving with almost the entire entourage for the airport and our flight to Sydney.