After Yekase slipped through a gap between shipping containers, she dropped into a sector that looked untouched by battle.

When she first came in, the lived-in furniture inside nearby containers told her this underground facility housed a lot of people, like warm lamps inside iron shells.

Yet all the way until she split from Ling Yi and Lu Yao, she hadn’t seen a single soul who even looked like a civilian, like a city with its windows shuttered.

“So… they’re all here.”

In a residential zone much like the upper levels, people clustered in twos and threes like alleyway neighbors, walking, chatting, buying snacks, faces calm as still ponds, as if the frontline noise was only in Yekase’s head.

She took in the scene and felt her outfit scream against the crowd, like a blade glinting in a teacup, so she crouched in a shadowed corner and tugged off her mask.

The jacket could pass, but one candid photo matched to Mechbreaker would rip her veil clean off—her face, because it wasn’t famous, was ironically the safest harbor.

She stowed every scrap of disguise, slid out of the dim corner, and stepped onto the “street,” a deck of steel under a ceiling of steel.

Street was generous; the “road” was just the rooftops of lower containers, shopfronts cut from containers by removing one wall, splayed open like metal clams.

Hands in pockets, Yekase drifted along the steel tide.

She glanced left and right, then froze at a music-and-video shop like a message in a bottle from childhood.

No door, just a mouth in the wall; star posters plastered like constellations, neat rows of plastic-cased albums, a counter TV looping a music video like a tiny stage.

Nostalgia tugged; she let it lead her in, like following a kite string back in time.

Attention from residents could go very wrong, sure, like stepping on a live wire; but this little underground city might vanish in days, and she didn’t want regret to be the last song.

“—‘First time I played Lightning Spirit, felt nothing special—’”

“—‘Because the spinning top that’s only mine, I already met—’”

A voice drifted from wall-mounted speakers, soft as dust on vinyl.

“Boss, what’s this track?”

“‘One Last Bingwa.’”

“Oh…”

“—‘The day I met you, the jet stream kicked in—’”

“—‘I can’t stop the sense I’m about to lose G1—’”

“—‘Happened plenty before, so let’s special-summon one more time—’”

…Catchy, though the lyrics walked sideways like a crab.

Yekase scanned the racks, then asked, “Got Tenfold Space?”

“Second row on your right.”

“Right, thanks…”

She slid a disc free and brought it to the counter like plucking a coin from a fountain.

“Don’t think I’ve seen you. From another block?” The owner beeped the barcode and tapped the register, words tossed like peanuts.

“Mm. Family just took a job. I’m poking around,” she lied smooth as rain on slate, holding up a payment code, then added, all casual drift, “It’s noisy topside today. What happened?”

“Eh, some outfit punched in. Pretty rare. Last time was years back, I think.”

“Don’t we need to take shelter? What if the fight rolls down here?”

He only laughed bright and clean, like sunlight off chrome. “There’s nowhere to run! So whatever.”

“…”

Yekase took the plastic bagged album and walked out into the steel air.

Right turn, down a stair, and another layer of streets unfurled like strata.

This one lay dimmer than above, bars pulsing low, massage parlors glowing pink, smoke-and-liquor kiosks blinking like wicked eyes; the air felt like night sweat.

Teens drifted in flocks, not few but many, moths circling neon.

These kids… live under here too?

Where do they go to school, where do bells ring, under this iron sky?

If hordes of students surfaced daily into Emerald Pool HQ, every watcher topside would smell the trail; the underground secret would crack like ice. So there are even grade schools and middle schools inside?

Kids this big, following parents below, and from then on, life and study and play all drowned in a sea of containers, like boats that never see the horizon.

Surprise pricked her, and some taste she couldn’t name rose in her throat like metallic rain; she was caught on the thought when her toe knocked something.

She looked down.

A buzz-cut youth with tattoos lay spread-eagled like a dropped cross, consciousness fogged, a sour-sweet stench curling off him like bad incense; Yekase frowned as recognition cut in.

“…!”

She stepped over the corpse-like body and kept going, her footfalls on steel plates landing heavier by a few decibels, like stones sinking in a pond.

The path ended in a station.

Wall lights spelled EAST E SECTOR 86 in flickering bones of neon; Yekase tapped her phone at the gate and walked to a platform that felt like a mouth in the dark.

Two minutes later, the train arrived.

Of course—another shipping container.

A blue container packed with seats hung from iron cables and slid along like a tin fish, a transport improvised from cranes and will.

Emerald Pool really loved containers.

Container houses, container shops, container subway… strictly, it was a cable tram, but down here everything was underground, so subway fit like a borrowed name.

She took a corner seat and found there wasn’t a single window; dozens of bodies pressed close turned heat and breath into a giant steamer basket.

One stop was all she could bear before she bolted out like steam from a lid.

Time to recheck Shen Shanshan’s relative coordinates…

“…Huh?”

The coordinate moved.

What’s going on?

Comms wouldn’t connect at all; Emerald Pool surely trashed Shanshan’s earpiece, and the teleporter likely got the same treatment. Unactivated, it was just an inconspicuous bracelet—confiscated, it should’ve been tossed aside like a pebble. So what did this movement mean?

Counterattack failed, and they found the teleporter?

She broke out and was now being hunted?

A lone beacon told a story with too few words… Fine, predict her path and cut her off…

As if it sensed Yekase’s intent, the coordinate started to dart in jagged bursts, carving a very three-dimensional trail like a dragonfly in reeds.

It was weaving through a maze of container alleys!

Got it. Shen Shanshan must’ve escaped on her own and was getting chased all over the hive.

“Celestial Speech. Parallel. Continuous. Combat…”

Yekase set one foot ahead and one behind and sank low like a bow being drawn.

Her fingertip touched the cold floor and felt the steel drink her heat.

She flexed her right ankle, a small hinge in a big machine.

“Levitation Spell.”

…

…

Footfalls on a steel floor ring too loud, like hail on a roof.

Shen Shanshan dropped from a container edge; landing thud echoed like a drumbeat. Five pursuers, by the sound of their boots, hammered behind her like an angry metronome.

She’d burned too many charges blowing open that black box of a room, and wasted too many rounds at first because the terrain loved to eat bullets.

Ammo left… three mags.

Frag grenades… none.

Flashbangs… none.

Smoke grenades… none—wait, her inner pocket coughed up one.

“…Hah… looks like luck still nods my way.”

She leaned against a container wall and stole three full breaths, cool and thin, then pushed off and ran again like a deer through pines.

Behind her, Emerald Pool fighters hopped down from the upper containers one by one, still clinging like burrs.

Neither side rushed to use long-range fire—the angles here turned shots into prayers, and a careless ricochet could black out the world for anyone, friend or foe.

I spend one bar of stamina and make each of them spend one; one for five is a trade in my favor… the joke flickered in her skull like a meme with teeth.

Fatigue bit in.

Her thighs trembled like reeds.

Her shoulders ached from lack of air.

A palm split on jagged steel and stung like salt.

The edge of her vision darkened like frost on glass.

…Enough. Farthest I go is that alley ahead.

No civilians around. No need to hear Yekase scold me. Good.

Shen Shanshan stopped and lifted her aching right foot like a weight in a scale—

She stripped off her made-in-China sneaker.

Then the other.

Socks on steel felt cold as river stones, but the chill cleared her head like wind.

She paired the shoes, wound up like a shot-putter, left hand pointing toward the corner they’d round,

And hurled with all she had.

“A present for you!”

The lead fighter rounding the bend saw first a spinning double blur swelling in his face like twin moons.

—Smack!

The right shoe tagged his forehead dead center.

“You—! Don’t let me catch you!!”

The sting wasn’t much, but the insult cut deep; with a gray smear on his face, he snapped and raised his gun.

A wall of smoke slapped him instead, white as surf.

Shen Shanshan slammed the forgotten smoke grenade to the floor; the passage was so tight the fog rolled out in a breath and swallowed them whole like a hungry tide.

“Can’t see!”

“Damn it, she had smoke!”

“Watch for her ambush!”

“Point man solo suppress! The rest, track her steps—”

The point man’s gun barked for two seconds, then choked.

A body thudded to the floor with a dull boom, and the four left heard blood patter on steel like red rain.

—He was dead.

How? No footsteps at all—how did she get close enough to kiss a blade—

…Oh.

Right. She took her shoes off.

Shen Shanshan slid her knife from the first poor bastard’s neck, flicked it clean like rain off a leaf, then went back to her trade.

Silent drift. Precise cuts.

“Ah…!”

Second.

Fear coiled around the last three like smoke snakes.

Blind without sight, their other senses flared, but the only music was their comrades’ ragged screams.

“I see her! Right here—”

Third.

“AAAAAAAH! Don’t come! Get away! Die, you hag! Get away!”

One of the two remaining snapped, screaming as he hosed lead at shadows, the muzzle flash a strobe of panic.

“Stop spraying! We run, run!”

“—Urk!”

A bullet, bounced by wicked angles, came home to his own chest and doused fear and frenzy alike like a bucket of night.

—And so, only one remained.

He flung his gun down the death tunnel, strangled his breath to a thread, and tiptoed backward like a crab from a net.

He wanted nothing but out.

Out from that monster.

The woman who raised her hands when caught… the woman who asked for manga in the cell…

That… demon in the smoke.

—Click.

His heel brushed something and tipped it, a tiny clink like a pebble in a well.

He looked down.

Only a left sneaker.