the first time three fingered hu had led charlie asher through the stygian back room of golden dragon cleaners , the ten-year-old beta male was sure that he was going to be kidnapped and sold into dry-cleaning slavery , butchered and turned into dim sum , or forced to smoke opium and fight fifty kung fu fighters at once while still in his pj 's ( charlie had a very tenuous grasp of his neighbors ' culture at age ten ) , but despite his fear , he was driven by a passion that had been embedded in his very genes millions of years ago : a quest for fire .