Kai dropped his bag onto the floor and stretched. “We’re definitely getting better at this,” he said, rolling his shoulders. “Four hours from extraction to relocation and that makes a new record for us.”

  Lian was standing by the window, looking out over the street. The early morning haze blurred the outlines of the market stalls below. “You make it sound like something worth celebrating,” she said without turning around.

  He grinned. “At this point, I take my victories wherever I can find them. Even the small ones.”

  She didn’t answer.

  The place was small, just two rooms and a kitchenette with a single thin mattress pushed against the wall. A cracked mirror leaned on the table beside a box of old circuit boards and wires Kai had already scavenged from the pawnshop owner.

  He sat on the floor and started unpacking his equipment. “You think Mei can actually get us access to the freight records?”

  “She said she would try,” Lian replied, still watching the street below. “But I wouldn’t count on anything happening quickly. Everyone’s nervous lately. The whole district is on edge.”

  Kai nodded, only half listening. His attention drifted to the furniture that looks mismatched and old but still solid. When he opened one of the drawers on the table, the wood creaked in protest. Inside were scraps of paper, receipts, a few coins and a thin envelope that had yellowed with age.

  “Someone forgot this,” he said, holding it up.

  Lian turned from the window. “What is it? Something useful?”

  “Not sure yet.” He tore the flap gently and pulled out a stack of photographs.

  They were faded but still clear enough. A family — parents, a girl, a boy — standing in front of a white building with a red gate. The father had his arm around the mother. The children were holding paper lanterns. Everyone was smiling.

  Kai froze.

  He knew that smile.

  He looked up slowly. Lian had already crossed the room and taken the top photo from his hand. Her fingers trembled slightly as she traced the image.

  “This was taken in Xiamen,” she said softly. “At the institute, just outside the main entrance.”

  He nodded. “That’s us. That’s really us.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, staring at the images spread across the table. Some showed their parents in lab coats, others captured their dinner times and a few had been taken near the ocean. The edges were curled and brittle with time.

  Kai flipped one over. On the back, written in their mother’s neat handwriting, were two words.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Ling Systems,” he murmured.

  Lian’s jaw tightened. “She must have hidden these here. Maybe she thought they would be safer away from everything else.”

  He leaned back, staring at the ceiling. “Why would she leave them in this place, though? It feels so random.”

  “It isn’t random,” Lian said quietly. “She had contacts everywhere, people who owed her favors or trusted her. Maybe one of them agreed to keep this safe for her, just in case.”

  Kai rubbed his face with both hands. “And we just happened to rent the exact place where she stashed family photos twenty years ago? That’s a hell of a coincidence if you ask me.”

  Lian looked at the photos again. Her eyes softened for a moment, just a flicker, before she tucked the envelope into her jacket. “Coincidence or not, these photos belong to us. They always did.”

  He studied her face. “You really think she planned all this? I mean, the photos, the coordinates, this apartment?”

  “I think she planned for us to survive,” Lian said, her voice steady.

  Kai cleared his throat. “You ever think about them? Like, actually think about them? Not just what happened after everything went wrong, but the time before?”

  Lian’s gaze was steady. “Every single day.”

  He nodded slowly, looking down at his hands. “I remember Dad teaching me how to solder circuits in the garage. I burned myself the first time and cried for an hour. He then told me that the pain meant I had created something.”

  A faint smile tugged at her lips. “He used to tell me the same thing. Usually after I scraped my knees trying to keep up with you in the yard.”

  Kai laughed quietly. “Yeah, well, you were never exactly great at following the rules.”

  She gave him a sidelong look. “Still not great at it, to be honest.”

  For the first time in days, the tension between them softened.

  He reached for another photograph, one that showed their mother sitting at a cluttered desk. On the corner of the photo, barely visible, was a series of numbers printed in faint ink.

  Kai squinted. “You see that? Right there in the corner?”

  Lian leaned closer. “Looks like coordinates. Definitely not just a smudge.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Let me check something.” He opened his laptop, typed quickly, and waited for the map to load. When it did, the cursor landed on a small industrial district just outside the city. There were half a dozen old buildings near the waterfront.

  He turned the screen toward her. “That’s here. Not far from the docks, maybe fifteen minutes if traffic is light.”

  She frowned. “She wouldn’t have written that down by accident.”

  “Maybe she wanted us to find it,” he said.

  Lian stared at the screen for a long time before replying. “Not tonight. We rest first.”

  Kai wanted to argue, to say they should go now while no one was watching, but one look at her face told him not to. She wasn’t tired, she was holding herself together, just barely.

  They stayed up a little longer, each lost in their own thoughts.

  At some point, Kai lay down on the mattress. The rain had started again, light and steady against the tin roof. Lian sat in the chair by the window, the envelope in her lap.

  She looked through the photos one by one, her eyes tracing every detail. Her mother’s hair pulled into a loose bun. Her father’s glasses were slightly crooked. Her own small hands clutching a lantern that looked far too big for her to carry alone.

  She exhaled slowly, almost soundlessly.

  Kai stirred behind her. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, her voice quiet.

  He didn’t believe her, but he let it go.

  Lian tucked the envelope safely away and rested her head back against the chair.

  For the first time in a long while, she didn’t think about their next job or their next target. She thought about home. Fragile and far away, buried under everything they had become.