Lian leaned over the balcony railing of the safehouse, her wet hair sticking to her cheek. She had the small encrypted drive in her hand, the one they’d pulled from the trafficker’s corpse three nights ago. Kai was inside, sprawled on the couch with a tangle of wires and monitors.

  He’d barely slept since then.

  “You’re going to fry your brain if you keep staring at that,” she said without turning.

  “Already fried,” Kai mumbled. “You know how hard it is to trace something like this?”

  Lian tapped the drive against the metal railing. “Then maybe it’s not worth opening.”

  He looked up at her. “Since when do you say that?”

  She didn’t answer.

  She finally came back inside, shaking the water from her coat. The air smelled like coffee and ozone. Kai had spilled some earlier when the power cut out. Their safehouse looked less like a hideout and more like a forgotten apartment that never found new tenants.

  “Did you get anything from the image files?” she asked, sitting beside him.

  Kai clicked a few keys. The screen flickered with static before resolving into a half-corrupted photo — a blurred shot of a warehouse interior, timestamped ten years ago.

  “Same folder as the contracts,” he said. “Someone was documenting something. Look at the background — there’s a banner.”

  He zoomed in. The image pixelated, but faint letters became visible on a hanging tarp: Ling Systems Kong.

  Lian felt a chill crawl up her arms.

  “That’s not possible,” she said quietly. “That company was dismantled before we were even born.”

  Kai shrugged. “Maybe someone bought the name.”

  “No.” She shook her head slowly. “That was the name of Dad’s lab.”

  Kai exhaled through his nose, rubbing his eyes.

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  “You sure?”

  “I used to sneak in when he worked late,” she said. “That logo — the little curved ‘S’ like a wave — it’s the same one he had on his badge.”

  For the first time in a long while, Kai didn’t have a smart remark. He leaned back, letting the weight of that settle.

  “So what the hell is it doing on an LSK data shard?”

  Lian didn’t answer right away. Her hands were clasped tight on her knees. “Maybe this isn’t about LSK watching us,” she said. “Maybe it’s about what they already know.”

  He frowned. “That sounds the same to me.”

  She stood and crossed to the window again.

  “Do you ever think about leaving?” she asked suddenly.

  Kai blinked. “Leaving what?”

  “This. The jobs.”

  He gave a short laugh. “What else would we do? I’m not exactly cut out for university life. And you’d get bored.”

  Lian smiled faintly, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Maybe. But sometimes I wonder if we’re just chasing ghosts.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, then said softly, “Maybe ghosts are the only things worth chasing.”

  For a second, she almost smiled again but the laptop chimed, breaking the quiet. Kai spun around.

  “It decrypted another section,” he said, fingers flying across the keyboard. The screen filled with lines of text, some garbled, some clear. He scrolled through them quickly.

  “Looks like… logistics data.”

  “From where?”

  “Mostly from the docks. But…” He stopped scrolling. “Lian. Look at this.”

  She leaned over. The last entry was dated just two weeks ago.

  ‘Recipient: LSK-72. Origin: Ling Systems (Reinstated). Handler: ‘Dr. M.’

  Her stomach tightened.

  “Dr. M?” she said.

  Kai’s brow furrowed. “Could be anyone.”

  “Or someone,” she said quietly.

  He shut the laptop, the sound sharp in the small room. “We shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”

  “No. We shouldn’t,” she agreed. Then she reached for her pistol on the table and began to clean it.

  Kai watched her for a moment. “You think they’re coming?”

  She met his eyes. “They never stopped.”

  They packed in silence. Kai wrapped the drive in foil and slipped it into his backpack. Lian checked the magazines, adjusted her coat.

  When they finally stepped out onto the street, dawn was rising between the towers.

  They walked side by side toward the subway, hoods up, anonymous among the early commuters.

  At the platform, Kai leaned against a pillar and pulled out his phone. “We need to change safehouses,” he said. “Too many traces from the last run. I’ll ping Mei for a new address.”

  Lian nodded absently. Her eyes were fixed on the reflection in the train window. Not the city passing by but their faces side by side. As the train roared into the tunnel, she whispered, barely audible, “Let’s make sure we finish what they started.”

  Kai didn’t ask what she meant. He didn’t need to.