Lights blinked and machinery hummed as a complex set of optics scanned every square inch of Austin’s body and transmitted the information via electronic pulses to a computer that digested the information and sent it to another computer to be reassembled in a 3-D projector. The scan was all smoke and mirrors, as Zavala had said, but Austin tensed his shoulders, expecting to feel an electrical tingle that never came.

Instead, the air under a cone across from Austin shimmered as if heated. A cloud of whirling motes began to form with no distinct outline at first, then materialized into the rough image of a human head and shoulders, transparent at first, becoming translucent, then solid, as the facial features filled in. Austin knew from his encounter with the Dragon Lady that the hologram was mutable and could be changed at a whim. But the face across the table was stranger than anything he could have imagined.

The eyes below the gracefully arched brows were the same jade-green as Chang’s hate-filled orbs. The fleshy lips were feminine, but the soft-featured face was at odds with stubble on the chin and the professional wrestler’s body with shoulders straining the seams of the black collarless shirt. The third Triad triplet seemed to be neither man nor woman but a freakish combination of both, a hermaphrodite.

The hologram remained as still as a marble statue. The small, delicate hands remained on the table. The features were frozen, eyes staring straight ahead. Then the lips moved, and a mellow voice, neither male nor female, came through the surrounding speakers.

“We meet again, Mr. Austin,” the hologram said.

“Should I call you Dragon Lady or Lai Choi San?” Austin asked.

“I am known as One to my followers. I was the first of my siblings to come into this world, by a few minutes. We Chinese are superstitious when it comes to numbers and believe a low number denotes good fortune.”

“From the way your luck has been going lately,” Austin said, “you’d better look for a new number. Your holographic image is all out of whack too. Nothing is moving except for your mouth.”

“That’s because I can’t move my limbs. I have limited movement of my eyes and full movement of my lips only.”

“What happened?”

“I was hoping you could tell me that, Mr. Austin.”

Austin paused, recalling Kane’s revelations about the paralyzing effects of the medusa toxin.

“We wondered what happened to the vaccine,” he said. “The ship’s helicopter was gone, so we concluded that the cooler with the vaccine and cultures was no longer on Chang’s freighter.”