Kai was at the desk, shirt half-buttoned, sleeves rolled. His eyes stayed fixed on the monitor’s glow. Lines of encrypted code danced across the screen.

  “How’s it looking?” she asked.

  He didn’t look up. “Messy. Whoever encrypted this didn’t want it cracked by anyone human.”

  Lian tilted her head. “You’re human?”

  He snorted softly. “Barely.”

  The corner of her mouth lifted. She reached for the small burner stove beside the window and lit it. The flame flickered weakly. “You hungry?”

  “Depends,” he said, typing fast. “You cooking?”

  “Instant noodles,” she said.

  “So yes, but no.”

  The water hissed as she poured it into a dented pot. They had eaten in worse places. Sometimes in stairwells. Sometimes on rooftops. The quiet after a mission always felt like something between peace and exhaustion.

  Kai leaned back, rubbing his eyes. “You know what’s weird?”

  “Only one thing?”

  “The shard’s not financial. Not shipment data either. It’s names. Coded names.” He spun the drive around his fingers. “Each one has a tag. Dates. Locations.”

  “Contracts?”

  “Maybe. But the tags read like research entries. Like… test logs.”

  Lian froze for a second, the chopsticks halfway to the pot. “Test logs for what?”

  He shrugged. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. There’s a word repeated in a few places—‘Series K.’”

  She repeated it under her breath, letting it roll in her mind. Series K. It sounded sterile. Manufactured.

  Kai’s eyes flicked to her reflection in the window. “You’re thinking about it again.”

  “I’m thinking about why people like that always end up hiding behind letters and codes,” she said. “Makes them feel less like murderers.”

  He smiled faintly. “You always find a way to make philosophy sound like a threat.”

  Lian stirred the noodles, then handed him a bowl. “Eat before it gets cold.”

  He took it, mumbling a thanks, and ate without taking his eyes off the screen. The only sounds were rain and the faint hum of the computer fan.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  After a while, Kai spoke again, quieter. “You ever think about… stopping?”

  She didn’t answer right away.

  He continued, “Not forever. Just… for a while. Take the van, drive somewhere nobody knows us. Ocean, maybe. Somewhere warm.”

  Lian sat down beside him, chopsticks still in hand. “And what would we do there?”

  “I don’t know. Sleep. Read something that’s not encrypted. Pretend we’re normal.”

  “Normal doesn’t last,” she said.

  “Neither do we.”

  That hung in the air a little too long.

  She set the bowl down and leaned her elbows on her knees. “You remember when we were kids, and Dad used to take us to that old tech fair in Kowloon? You’d run off to play with the robots, and Mom would yell about losing you every time.”

  Kai laughed. “Yeah. She always found me by the ice cream stand.”

  “Because you always bribed the vendor to give you two scoops.”

  He grinned. “Some skills are genetic.”

  Lian looked at him for a moment — the lines under his eyes, the slight tremor in his fingers when he stopped typing. He was too young to carry this kind of weight. But then, so was she.

  “Don’t lose yourself in this,” she said softly.

  He nodded, but his gaze drifted back to the code. “I’ll sleep when it’s cracked.”

  She exhaled and stood, checking her weapons on the table. Everything in its place.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “Roof.”

  “Need backup?”

  She shook her head. “Just air.”

  The city met her with damp concrete and neon reflections. The rain had thinned to mist. From here, the skyline looked like a heartbeat — jagged and alive. She closed her eyes and listened to the static of faraway traffic and the soft murmur of an old radio from a window below.

  After a few minutes, Kai joined her. He was carrying the laptop.

  “Couldn’t stay away?” she asked.

  He smirked. “Cracked part of it. You should see this.”

  She turned as he angled the screen. Rows of decrypted text filled it — strings of names and numbers, but one stood out.

  “Zhou Biotech,” he said. “Recognize it?”

  Lian’s jaw tightened. “They went under five years ago. Illegal human trials.”

  “Apparently not as under as we thought.” He scrolled. “Some of these entries are recent. Last month.”

  The cold breeze brushed her face, carrying the faint smell of rain and electricity.

  “Coordinates?” she asked.

  “Shenzhen district. Industrial zone.”

  “Then we move tomorrow.”

  He hesitated. “You sure? We just hit a nest. They’ll be looking for us.”

  “They always are.”

  Kai sighed, closing the laptop. “You really don’t know how to take a breath.”

  She looked out over the skyline. “Breathing doesn’t stop the next name from showing up.”

  He leaned beside her, shoulder to shoulder. For a while, neither spoke. The hum of the city below was almost peaceful.

  Finally, he said, “You know, you could’ve been a teacher or something.”

  She laughed quietly. “You’d have made a terrible student.”

  “I’d have hacked your gradebook.”

  “I’d have caught you.”

  He smiled. “Maybe.”

  The rain began again — light, steady, wrapping the rooftop in silver noise. They stood there until the laptop beeped softly, a new notification flickering across the screen.

  Kai glanced down. “Another name just unlocked.”

  Lian didn’t ask who. She just said, “Tomorrow, then,” and turned back toward the door.