Dozens of days had slid by since Night Frost arrived, like frost slipping from an eave into shadow. Her days swung like a pendulum: lab, home, push the Array Pattern harder, sleep, then back to the lab. The monotony settled on her shoulders like fine dust, and somehow her body learned that weight.
Lately she didn’t have to go to the lab; all the data had been checked, like nets drawn and hung to dry. She only waited for the Doctor to lift the curtain and announce the measurements.
In those spare ten-odd days, she and Yin Chen Yue strolled the streets and slit-like alleys, tracing their turns like threads on a loom. She caught the shape of the neighborhood, a lantern-lit map in her head, yet the whole underground still stretched like an ant nest she hadn’t fully walked.
She didn’t drop the bracelet problem, nor the condensing of the Array Pattern; both stayed in her hands like twin whetstones. With each call, her Mana flowed easier, a river finding its old bed, and the Array Pattern had condensed up to her wrist.
As the completion climbed, common pool water couldn’t smother her flame anymore; in a few minutes, her burning Mana turned the surface into a rattling kettle. Steam curled like pale snakes and vanished in the air.
It wasn’t all bad: she no longer needed an induction hob to boil water, as long as she didn’t mind singeing herself. A small wicked convenience, like a match struck in a dark room.
Today brought an idle day, a fork in a quiet path. Night Frost had two choices: stay home and train her Mana, or go find Yin Chen Yue and keep mapping the edges.
That little one should be at the elevator now, waiting for her father, like a sparrow on a railing. Night Frost had told her to rest, told her he wouldn’t be back for days, but the words slid off like rain on oiled paper. She kept saying, What if he comes back early?
They had talked a lot these days, ember-warm conversations under a low ceiling. Night Frost learned Yin Chen Yue lived alone; neighbors along the street took turns tending her daily needs, like hands passing a candle. The girl worked hard at the small things she could do, and she’d earned a name among them, a little lamp everyone knew.
“Xiao Chen Yue, time to eat.” The words rang like a ladle on a pot. When Night Frost had time, she cooked for her, and along the way she let her face ripen among the neighbors like fruit left on a sill.
To blend in, Night Frost put on pure white clothes, a sterile snow under dim lights. The reek of disinfectant and bleach clung like bitter wind; she didn’t like it, and at night she slipped back into her own clothes.
Her first taste of life here shocked her hard, like cold water on the nape. Every home seemed to hum with fridges, freezers, induction hobs—cold breath and warm coils everywhere, nothing lacking.
Compared to her old rented room up top, the contrast stung like salt. She saw herself again, working nights, cooking on a wheezing gas burner and a tired hob; tears betrayed her then, a hot, salty line at the corner of her lips.
If a few months ago—before power found her—she’d been dropped here, given ten days’ rest, then offered two roads, she might’ve stalled in the fog. One road: take power and chase the past. The other: live quiet and never look at the storm.
But now she wouldn’t drown in this gentleness; she’d walked too far to turn soft, like an arrow already loosed. She wanted an answer, whether it matched her hopes or cut against them.
Yin Chen Yue ran from the elevator in small steps, a bud after rain, looking brighter these days. Night Frost’s nagging about sleep had worked like mulch around a sapling.
She fiddled with her bowl and chopsticks, wood tapping porcelain like tiny bells. Night Frost didn’t serve much, but one look at that small frame and she wanted to press the rice firm, snow packed into a ball. She finally understood why the old headmistress used to pack Night Frost’s bowl tight.
But that would outstrip the girl’s appetite, so she held back, and turned the day’s allotted vegetables into dishes glowing like jade and amber. The colors rose from the plates like steam over winter greens.
She hadn’t cooked in a while; her hands felt rusty, hinges needing oil. She thought she could’ve done better, but watching Yin Chen Yue eat every last grain sparked a small fire of pride in her chest.
Under Night Frost’s care, Yin Chen Yue plumped visibly, like dough proving under a cloth. Thin had given way to softness; a pinch now found spring.
“Stop it! Sister Night Frost!” The protest chimed like a bell as Night Frost realized her fingers were kneading the girl’s cheek. She drew her hand back behind her like a cat hiding a paw.
Dishes clinked into the sink, water beading like glass seeds along the rims. She washed them clean, then the two of them stepped out into the corridor air.
With nothing pressing today, they could go farther, like widening a charcoal sketch. In Night Frost’s eyes, the underground city already stood clear as a plan, but her feet hadn’t traced every vein. Today was for stitching gaps, for tagging every place that might become a line of escape.
Every time the elevator rose, the city’s whole body spread under her, four pillars holding up a stone sky. The buildings sat low, a squat forest; four clinics marked the map like white pins. Residents said they had to visit monthly for checkups, the same procedures she’d gone through days ago.
Those clinics sent all samples along two corridors, streams feeding a second-floor lab outside the wall. Night Frost didn’t pry into what that mill ground; some waters ran black for a reason.
The other two elevator shafts worked like throats, swallowing goods and coughing up staff.
They said there was a water-treatment plant below, a machine river under the concrete skin, but Night Frost hadn’t found it yet. She had found pipes—plenty, like rib bones. If the system matched the Divine Cult Modification Center’s design, then once she restored her strength, she could ride those veins and slip away.
Another thorn stuck at her heel: Lin, who trailed her like a shadow stuck to a boot. As she got better at calling Mana, she could spill her spirit sense like mist and feel the presence behind her, a chill knife at the back.
It didn’t take thought to name him. Lin.
Last time, after a Blood draw, she’d tried to ride the elevator to freedom; Lin had dragged her back, an iron collar snapping shut. He warned her not to twitch wrong.
With that failed escape on her record, Lin had glued himself to her, a watchdog at her heel, afraid she’d bolt and bring the boss’s bite down on him.
Night Frost also had her little storms. She’d burned open a water pipe near the mains; water had gushed like a burst artery. She’d “accidentally” knocked over dangerous reagents in the lab; the flame had almost caught the curtains of air. If he hadn’t stopped her just now, the city’s power grid might’ve felt her teeth.
Recently she quieted down, looking like she’d given up the sky and sunk into the city’s daily tide. A fox lying low in tall grass.
But Lin had parts of her file. He’d read her feats; four bold characters stamped themselves in his mind: sly old fox. She wasn’t the brainless kind. She had to know he was tailing her. So she was sheathing her light, waiting for his guard to slip, a blade asleep under silk.
She’d been tame enough that he had little to do. He’d expected fiercer pushback, something to salt his days, but people like Night Frost—smooth as river stones—made dull company, like sparring a pillow.
Orders were orders, though. She was the boss’s last hope, a chess piece the king wouldn’t trade. She couldn’t be lost.
Lin used to spend his time greasing palms and taking trips, a crow winging between roofs. Now most of his hours circled the Doctor and Night Frost, afraid this delicate-faced girl would bloom a calamity. Porcelain on the shelf, gunpowder inside.
Don’t trust the sweet curve on her lips, he thought; honey can hide a knife.
He saw Night Frost step out holding Yin Chen Yue’s hand, and he followed, sour-faced, a mosquito whining by the ear. He admitted it—she’d gotten under his skin.
This place was the surface street’s reflection, a mirror city beneath a concrete sky. If you didn’t dream of leaving, if you didn’t break the rules and hit your quotas, no one cared what you did.
Rouge Rabbit had poured resources into building it, a garden under glass. Their people were everywhere—at the barbecue stalls, behind milk-tea counters, inside the clinics—pink insignias blooming like stubborn flowers.
Spending here ran on vouchers, handed out evenly each month after the Blood draw, paper leaves in neat stacks. Night Frost had plenty, left behind by the Doctor.
The Doctor hadn’t come back much lately, tangled in a knotty problem like a moth in web.
Night Frost rarely needed vouchers; they piled up like dry kindling. She took Yin Chen Yue for a few loops, sampling good food like sparrows pecking crumbs, and more importantly, to tease the man stuck to her back. Dangle sugar in front of a dog on a leash.
Her spirit sense flickered on and off, a lantern in wind, but every time it lit she felt the tail hook into her. An itch between the shoulder blades.
After she’d glanced back too many times, the man stopped pretending. He followed openly; when she turned, he didn’t duck. He told her flat-out he was right behind her, a shadow stepping into the sun.
Seeing the annoyance on Lin’s face, Night Frost marked it as payback for that night; her mood cracked open like cloud, and a thin blue showed.
She walked to the avenue’s heart where a round pillar speared into the fake sky, vanishing into the dome’s dark. The load-bearing spine of the place, a bone under the city’s skin.
She rapped it with her knuckles; the sound came back hollow, a drum in a tree trunk. No doubt it was empty inside, stuffed with something.
“Don’t bother,” Lin said around a sausage, grease glinting like oil on water. He came up, pried up a brick, and showed her a pipe-laced underbelly. “This is the city’s power system.”
“Don’t ask why I’m telling you,” he added, voice dry as twine. “I just don’t want you wrecking the place. The pillar’s tough; you’d need effort to crack it. By then, I’d be here.”
Night Frost nodded, planting the details in memory like seeds. Maybe she’d need them. Truth be told, his warning made her fingers itch more; the more the door said do not touch, the warmer the knob felt. But she pressed the urge down, a cat flexing claws then tucking them away, and followed Yin Chen Yue onward. Lin hugged her flank, and she cut him a glare, a shard of ice under lamplight.
