Yekase waited, a cat crouched on the sill, ears pricked to the night.

She waited until the TV spilled news like cold rain: a suburban train had derailed.

She kept waiting, seconds clacking like an abacus, patience thinning like rice paper.

She waited until the Twin Towers battle column lined up like steel reeds outside Emerald Pool’s HQ.

She waited and waited, breath a taut bowstring, mind a drum in the dark.

“Damn it, did Shen Shanshan just sleep like a stone at the bottom of a pond?”

A lone heroine slips into an enemy HQ at midnight, then vanishes—too classic; her quick mind flipped through a stack of grim, snuff-style scripts like blood-stained pages.

She couldn’t wait anymore. She called Ling Yi, then rode an electric scooter, wheels humming like dragonfly wings, to the Ling family fence.

Ling Yi and Ling Ya were already standing inside the lush Ling Eden Hope Park, trees pressed close like green clouds.

“Time to move. Got no regrets left behind?”

“Eek… that sounds spooky.” Ling Yi shivered like grass in a breeze. “I can’t think of any regrets on short notice.”

“Good.”

She wasn’t just trying to spook Ling Yi. Striking during the Twin Towers assault on Emerald Pool meant a different beast: an active raid, by-any-means sabotage against Sinister Organization assets, like throwing oil on a storm fire.

It would breed grudges and investigations, weeds that grow fast in cracks—no “maybe,” only certainty.

It also meant the codename Flashblade Red would shift like a banner in wind—from gentle protector to a declared resister on Mechbreaker’s level, clear as a drawn blade against the Sinister Organization.

Yes—when it came down to it, Yekase flinched, a swallow in crosswind, and pulled the half-shelved name Mechbreaker back from snow.

“I can’t fight at your side, but if danger bites, call me at once. I’ll relay it to the Beast King Squadron like lightning.”

Ling Ya stood a pace behind Ling Yi, regret on her face like frost.

Yekase nodded. Professor F prioritizing Liudong City was a sensible move, like sheltering the hearth; she wouldn’t blame them.

“If we really call, come save us.”

“Absolutely!”

Ling Yi hopped onto the scooter’s back seat, arms around Yekase’s waist, and pinched a bit of soft flesh like testing dough.

“Yow?!”

“It’s great, that feeling of comrades trusting each other… Doctor, you already pilot a mech, so when do I get my first teammate?”

“I set one up for you, didn’t I? PeaceWarrior. PeaceWarrior!”

“We haven’t said a single word and she’s a pre-teammate? That’s like a blind date. Teammates should be a chance meeting, then cooperation and misfires, then slow understanding—like tea steeping.”

“Then wait for your accident, kid.”

“Mmph—”

Funny thing, Yekase’s path to Lu Yao did match that story, as long as she swapped the part where she trapped him for a gentler play—using her true heart to soften stone.

She waved to Ling Ya, then twisted the throttle; the scooter leapt like a carp.

Weekend in the city, the tide of people flowed as usual. The government had issued a D-level-and-above conflict alert, but residents only took a detour around Emerald Pool’s HQ, drifting like schools of fish.

Twin Towers started as a human-resource rental house. They fielded the Yangtze Delta’s sharpest professional assassins—worlds apart from the usual freelance mercs, like anime ninjas versus whatever passes for ninjas in reality.

After they crowned themselves the Twin Towers’ top organization, they didn’t abandon their roots. They widened the channel, stabilized the current, and even founded the Silverwing Dreadstar Professional Assassin Academy—five branches nationwide, a factory stamp for elite mercenaries.

Yekase had no faith in a frontal clash with those knife-true professionals. She’d lay snares while they fought on Emerald Pool’s turf, hooks set under the waterline.

“When we arrive, we slip into the building first. Remember, we’re sisters. No cram school on weekends. We’re here to visit our dad who works at Emerald Pool.”

“Wouldn’t they just shoo us out?”

“If they try to escort us out, knock them out; if they raise a hand, kill them.”

“Got it.”

Truth was, Yekase wanted them all dead, the way frost wants the leaves. For Ling Yi’s mind, she softened the edges.

Worst case, knock them out, plant a timer bomb, and walk away like a shadow at dawn.

They took a narrow alley stacked with trash and broken furniture, climbing toward Emerald Pool’s base like ants to a tree root. A quick look around, and you could spot plainclothes assassins idling like wolves in brush; Twin Towers had thrown meat on the fire to chew this tough bone.

The hitch was the net they’d woven. How to slip through and get inside?

Yekase felt a prickle, lifted her head like a fox scenting snow.

Most blocks around Emerald Pool HQ were new residential towers, sealed tight to outsiders. One exception gleamed south like a white stone in a stream.

A postal building.

On its second-from-top floor, the fourth window’s corner flicked a cold glint—barely there, like a needle behind a curtain.

“She’s here.”

—Thup.

A man Yekase had pegged as a plainclothes killer grunted like a punctured drum and collapsed. Blood spilled from under him, spreading on the street like a crimson lake.

Even with Yekase’s sharpened hearing, at this distance it was just a dull pop, like opening a beer bottle.

Suppressor. She was using a suppressor.

The other killers didn’t panic. They tightened their circle, took cover like crabs under rocks. Yekase glanced back to the sparking window—empty as a swallowed spark.

Combatants carried simple energy shields and Infinite Power detectors, but against bullets, those were paper umbrellas in a storm.

PeaceWarrior had started her hunt.

“Move.”

Yekase decided fast. She tugged Ling Yi, kept low, and skimmed along the car’s flank toward the gate like shadows hugging steel.

—Thup. Thup.

Two cries rang together, frayed like torn silk.

Two killers farthest from them clutched chest and throat, knees buckling like felled bamboo, breath gone in seconds.

A young man dressed as a jogger pressed his face to the phone strapped to his left chest, voice steady and quick like tapping rain:

“Reporting, sir. Main gate team under sniper fire. Post Two, Post Four, Post Eight KIA. Repeat, main gate under sniper fire. Over.”

They stopped pretending. Every plainclothes drew hands inside jackets, then slid into nearby cover like eels into crevices.

Including the sedan side right beside our two “lost sisters.”

“Sir, hello. How do we get to Henan Road Pedestrian Street?”

The man peered through his shades, gaze like a cold knife, raking them head to toe. “Go north, take the subway. There’s a fight here. If you don’t want to die, scram.”

“Thanks, sir.”

Yekase smiled and waved, like a lantern before a storm.

Then her raised hand swept his chest and face, slipped under the lower rim of his sunglasses, and stabbed into both inner eye corners like twin awls.

“Mm?!”

His lifting hand was pressed down. A shot cracked, only punching a fresh hole in his own shoe, smoke curling like a burnt thread.

“See you in your next life.”

Yekase and Ling Yi slid past the man, his eyes gone dark as poured ink, and reached the gate. They crouched and slipped inside like mice under a door.

“Is PeaceWarrior covering us?” Ling Yi glanced back, then palmed the Flashblade Key, knuckles white as shells.

“Pretty much. Once she finishes the rest, she’ll catch up.”

Yekase nodded. “Told you—she’s got social thorns, but her stance and methods are solid. Those shots were clear cover fire.”

“Mm… I’ll try to be friends with her.”

Yekase patted Ling Yi’s head like smoothing a cat, then took point down the corridor.

The teleport wristband used a space-coordinate module to pin landing points; right now, she could invert the compass and find Shen Shanshan. She fiddled with it, tested each direction like tasting wind, and found the strongest signal below.

“Basement level, no movement… so she’s caught. That unreliable woman.”

“Who? We have other teammates?”

Yekase remembered Ling Yi didn’t know Shen Shanshan. No time to explain in full, so she kept it simple, words quick as sparrows:

“My old friend. She slipped in alone last night to investigate. Looks like Emerald Pool grabbed her.”

“Then we go rescue her now? Also… it’s too quiet in here.”

Ling Yi peered down the hall—weekends still mean overtime, but no gunshots, no footsteps, just silence like a sealed jar.

“Yeah…”

An empty long corridor, hollow as a bamboo tube.

Dark ceiling lamps, dead as winter fruit.

Floor tiles clean enough to mirror clouds.

Too quiet… and this is the first floor.

Yekase’s eyes rolled like a bead, then settled on the obvious:

“Underground facilities. The main fight’s below.”

For an industrial giant like Emerald Pool, digging an air-raid shelter under home turf is as casual as snapping a twig.

A big shelter, big enough to swallow every armed combatant who charged in like a flood.

Which leaves one question: how do we get down?

“Doctor, do we crawl the vent?”

“Uh… why the vent? It’s dirty and narrow, like a soot throat. And there are those big fans that block the shafts—the cult-film kind that slice people into sheets.”

She wasn’t dismissing vents just for grime—well, not only for grime. There were hard reasons.

First, major HVAC loops carry alarm systems, sirens like hawks.

Second, Shen Shanshan got caught.

Yekase knew her. She would crawl the vent—like a ferret.

She got grabbed. So the vent route is a dead end. Simple cause, simple fruit.

Yekase pulled out her mask, slid her hands into the falling jacket sleeves, and straightened her collar like a blade in a scabbard.

“No more pretending. We take the stairs.”