Yekase tore through the corridors for ten minutes, a lone arrow skimming the stale wind.

Relief cooled her chest, then tightened. It wasn’t that she missed a stair down; there simply wasn’t one.

The lower level sat sealed, like a manhole welded shut.

Maybe this was the bottom of the residential hive. Below, cut off like a quarantined abyss, lay the fighters’ garrison. Shen Shanshan was circling near it, like a trapped kite.

Yekase pulled out her beacon again. Shanshan had stayed in place for a long time. Then her motion thinned to calm ripples.

Looks like she cleared the hounds, and now she’s combing for an exit.

That thought let Yekase breathe, a small lantern in fog.

She lifted her gaze. The layout spiraled around a vertical shaft, a ring built like a cliffside village. It felt like Blighttown from Dark Souls, except the downward route had slammed shut like a barred gate.

A giant LED panel hung in the shaft’s open heart, a cold sun. It scrolled rules and warnings. On top, heavy letters read:

Intern Employee Living Area.

Interns, at the bottom from day one. A seed planted in the dark.

“Hey, you. You’re—”

A voice creaked from beside her, like a window hinge. Yekase turned. A face poked out from a container window.

That face tugged a memory, like a thread caught on a nail.

“Construction-crew uncle?”

It was one of the debt collectors from the water park—the one whose Mandarin was crisp.

“How are you here?”

“I should ask you!” He laughed, a dry river finding a trickle. “Emerald Pool re-signed us. Base salary added. Social insurance paid. Thanks to you folks.”

“Re-signed?”

It sounded off, too clean for Emerald Pool. Yekase frowned. A single story was a lantern that hid its own shadow. She opened her Infinite Power vision, quiet as breath.

“You’re not afraid Emerald Pool will scam you again?”

“Afraid, sure. But folks need to eat. We’ve only got muscle. Other companies fear trouble and wouldn’t hire us. We stewed for weeks.”

Silence pressed, like dust on metal.

She hadn’t thought that far. Piloting mechs to riot was a thunderclap; other firms would dodge them like lightning. Then there’s Emerald Pool’s revenge hanging like a blade.

They rose for survival, and crawled back for survival.

“Be careful,” she said, the words a thin blanket against winter.

She felt it—how small one person was against a society braided by a Sinister Organization, its roots tangled like mangrove roots under black water.

“Old Li, lunch break’s over. Back to work—”

A shout came from deeper inside the container, a whistle through pipe.

“Got it, boss! On my way!”

Old Li waved and slipped back, a leaf caught by routine.

Yekase leaned to the window. Another face surfaced, unexpected as a fish under the ice.

He saw her too.

Both froze, movement tucked behind breath.

“You—”

“You first.”

“My daughter died.”

“Straight to that, huh.”

Yekase sighed and rested against the frame, her heart a tight fist.

He was the robber from the corner store three months back, the one who almost put a knife to her throat. He wore a mask then, but she had seen his mouth, his eyes, up close. Memory bit like frost.

It felt absurd now—how weak she’d been. Even exhausted and hungover, she couldn’t imagine a normal man taking the first step on her.

He left baffled Old Li and stepped to the window. He met Yekase’s gaze, two stones in a river.

“Without the medical bills, I’m doing better.”

“Congrats,” she said, words brittle as reeds.

He grabbed her collar in a single yank, a hook into cloth.

“How’s it feel to give a final kick to the cornered? You shine in armor, a model hero. That schoolgirl climbed her mountain, right? My girl had to die! Tell me—”

Yekase’s face didn’t change. Her eyes held his, a still pool that showed its sky.

His cheek muscles trembled, like ropes under strain. Bloodshot lines cracked his clouded eyes. Liquid rose, a tide in his rims.

“Tell me—you promised me. You heroes would build a nation of equals. A country where no child dies sick. A world without the Sinister Organization. You promised me. You promised.”

Yekase placed her hand on his, gentle as a moth wing on bark.

“Right now, I can’t promise you.”

His grip loosened, as if some knot cut itself.

Yekase reached to her side and pulled a staff from thin air, like drawing a reed from a lake. She set the Polaris Staff down on the metal floor, a quiet tap, and murmured:

“Nightlight Torch.”

A small flame bloomed on its plain head, a candle in a tunnel. The two middle-aged men stared at the fire, lost to the shape of her intent.

“I checked,” she said, her voice a thread through smoke. “You each have a special energy node inside. There’s a clump of condensed Neptune Energy there, never triggered.”

“What does that mean?” Old Li asked, a sparrow question.

“In plain words, Emerald Pool buried a remote bomb in you.”

Yekase braced the staff with her right hand. Her left hovered by the flame. Five fingers plucked at something invisible, careful as a seamstress teasing threads.

“Probably in everyone,” she added, a chill in the sparks. “That’s why the video-store owner said there’s nowhere to run.”

Old Li and the foreman traded a look, like two stones realizing they share the same crack.

Remote bombs? When did that happen? Their bodies felt fine as dry wood.

“All done. Everyone in this section is disarmed,” she said, as if pinching out candles down a row. “I have to find someone. Excuse me.”

She stowed the staff and turned, her shadow sliding along steel.

“Wait!”

“What else?”

The foreman leaned out halfway, a new expression carved on his face, a cliff after rain.

“You said you’re looking for someone. I’ve worked here more than a month. I know the terrain.”

“You’re serious?”

He nodded hard, a hammer tapping iron.

“You weren’t about to start work?”

“I still have comp time.”

Yekase studied him in silence for five seconds. Time and trials had cut gullies in his face, deeper than before. Desperate, hope cracked, then hired by Emerald Pool to survive, working six-and-one a hundred meters underground. These three months were a storm she couldn’t read.

“Then I’ll trouble you.”

If his final answer was revenge, she would gladly reunite him with his daughter. Mercy can be a blade.

The foreman took off his workwear and stepped out of the container dorm, shoulders squared.

Yekase extended her right hand. “Let’s call this our first meeting. I’m Yekase.”

“Lei Zhenting. Skip the handshake.”

Yekase pursed her lips and let it pass, watching Lei Zhenting move ahead, a prow cutting gray water.

“So, where are we going?”

She pointed at the floor. “Below should be the fighters’ garrison. I’m rescuing a captured friend. I could dig, but I’d rather not draw heat before the main force arrives.”

“Bold,” he snorted, a small thunder.

“Backing out?”

“Going.”

Lei Zhenting strode off. Yekase hurried after him, steps like quick raindrops.

“I haven’t been inside the garrison,” he said, voice low as gravel. “But there are two routes.”

“First is the main gate the guard team uses.”

“Second is the chute they use to send errant employees to solitary. If the guards grabbed your friend, they tossed her down that pipe.”

Yekase nodded. “Just get me to the pipe’s mouth. I’ll handle the rest.”

Lei didn’t answer. That was his plan anyway. She was already grateful for the bridge he offered.

They moved between containers. Yekase watched his broad back, a shield in a maze.

Interns greeted him along the way, faces like tired lanterns. He nodded back, steady as a tree. A foreman in a month said a lot about his ability.

It was a chasm from the man she remembered.

What turned him into that man?

No—what turned him into that then?

“Past this door,” he said, hand on a heavy handle. “Inside is a flat space the size of a basketball court. The hole to solitary sits in the middle.”

“Thank you.”

Lei said nothing. He gripped the iron handle and pulled. The door peeled open with a smooth groan, and the scene cleared, like fog lifted.

A broad flat lay inside, wide against the cramped world around it.

A man stood alone on the plain.

He wore all black, a hulking frame under a Matrix sheen. Dark glasses hid his eyes. He saw them, and his voice carried, a bell in an empty gym:

“Employee 145734. You brought an unidentified person into a controlled zone. That violates our confidentiality protocols.”

“You’re fired.”

Lei Zhenting’s fist clenched, knuckles white as chalk.

“Also,” the man added, tone neat as paperwork, “unfortunately, we’re in a sensitive period of war with Twin Towers. For company safety, I’ll execute you both here. No objections, right?”

“How could I not object!” Lei snapped, a spark catching dry hay. “Fired, fine. But for this—”

“Behind the door!”

Yekase grabbed his coat and yanked him back. The iron door cleaved into two smooth slabs, a silk cut with no fray.

Lei’s eyes flared, shock bright as glass.

“Nice budget,” Yekase said, rising from the floor. “You hired someone who can dye metal—cutting it smooth like silk—to guard the gate.” She raised Nayuta into her hand, a blade that hummed like a taut string.

“‘Dye metal’? What does that—”

“Oh?” the black-clad man said, mouth a straight line. “Intruder, you refuse to comply? In that case, what awaits you won’t just be—”

Yekase vanished, a swallow flicking out of sight.

Ding.

She hit top speed in a breath, slashing from the low blind side like night wind. The cut met silence.

The man caught it without a ripple, his sword tip touching her blade edge—precise as a needle kissing thread—bleeding off her whole power.

Yekase’s breath held, a drum mute.

Trouble.

She’d planned to talk once he parried. He did. But—

He stopped her with his sword tip?

He looked like the Matrix. He moved like a wuxia legend stepped out of ink.