And because the coolies were eager to prove usefulness the second blood hit the floor, they dropped their muzzles, surged in, and grabbed the Taishanese by the head and the ankles, hauling him down the a left-hand corridor, moving in a pace like they were dying to cannibalize the man. ‘So what else got him to getting clipped by your company men, huh? This is less of a lesson and more of a GRWM...’ Cameron said in an anti-climactic Cantonese, holstering the Glock and turning his head right toward the masked man, who had to be Popstar, trying too hard to stay inside the performance. The henchmen followed suit and holstered as well, like the tension had been an on-off switch, convenient to test him. Cameron did not yet know of the man’s bag of tricks, not until he pulled out an older Samsung Galaxy and started digging through it with the calm of someone about to prove a point. ‘Say, your name is Choo Ah-lun, yes?’ the man asked. ‘One of many aliases,’ Cameron answered.

Whatever character development Cameron thought he could write went out the window the second the man affirmed, ‘We are both Old Prosperity,’ and tilted the phone to show a video already playing—whether it was from 30 centimeters away or a meter away, it didn’t matter, as the clip was something unmistakeable: something Cam thought wouldn’t resurface—not after 12 years or so, and it tightened his fibres. A cage fight, recorded on mostly camcorders and earlier smartphones: February 2012, the watermark read. ‘Gook Ninja’ was the unaffectionate arena name that Cameron received back then. Thai thought about it ahead of time and never allowed anyone—including his friends who got him on cocaine and later scammed him out of the car workshop funds, to speak his name in those circles, so it was ‘Gook Ninja’ or absolutely no moniker. And the video was of the ‘Gook Ninja Back-To-Back 2012’ line of DVD rips—underground trash that travelled farther than it should. In that split second, staring at himself on-screen and feeling the old burn rise, Cameron’s only real question became how much Popstar actually knew, and how long he had been sitting on it.

POPSTAR: So, you are the Gook Ninja, huh? «I knew there was something to you, the second I eyed you up.»

CAMERON: «You sound like a fan.»

POPSTAR: «Are you still deep in scrapping?»

CAMERON: «Explains the talent agency part—»

POPSTAR: Answer my question, dickhead. «You fought against people twice your size before; and a little birdie told me you scrapped against 20-30 coolies alone at Sun Ying! Who the dick does that, but you?»

CAMERON: «I start filming when I need to. Is that what you are looking for?»

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SECURITY ISSUE - The Transgressive Crime Novel extract

ACT 1: UNPROVEN ANTIDOTE FOR DESTRUCTION

06/02/2026