Kai leaned against the cracked frame of the old apartment window, looking down at the street. It didn’t look like the kind of place that hid anything important. But that was exactly why they were here.

  Lian moved slowly across the room, scanning the floorboards with the small device clipped to her wrist. It beeped in irregular bursts. She crouched near a corner, tapping her gloved fingers against the wood. “Someone built over this,” she murmured.

  Kai glanced over. “You sure? This place looks like it hasn’t been touched in decades.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “That’s what makes it perfect.”

  The building had been condemned years ago, but it still had power from an illegal hook-up running through the walls. Kai rubbed his eyes. He had been awake for almost twenty hours. Lian hadn’t said much since they left the last safehouse. She’d been focused, methodical, like she was trying not to think too hard.

  Lian found a loose board and pried it up. Beneath it was a square of old metal plating. She brushed the dirt away and frowned. “It’s reinforced.”

  Kai came over, setting down his backpack. He pulled out a compact cutting tool and knelt beside her. “You think this is what the signal came from?”

  “Only one way to know.”

  The metal hissed and smoked as Kai sliced through it. When they finally lifted the panel, they found a narrow cavity about half a meter deep. Inside was a sealed box wrapped in a thin plastic sheet.

  Lian lifted it out and placed it on the floor. “You have your tools?”

  Kai nodded and unzipped the pack again. He connected a small probe to the box’s surface and watched the monitor flicker to life. “It’s lead lined. Whatever’s inside is old tech, maybe magnetic storage. This could take a bit.”

  Lian stayed crouched beside him, her eyes fixed on the box. “This place belonged to one of our parents’ colleagues, didn’t it?”

  Kai hesitated. “According to the records I decrypted, yes. Doctor Han. He disappeared a few months after the lab fire.”

  “And LSK erased him after that,” she said quietly.

  Kai didn’t answer. He could feel the heaviness in her voice. Every time they dug deeper into the past, it brought them closer to things neither of them were ready to face.

  The tool beeped, and the seal released with a dull pop. Kai pulled the lid open. Inside were two hard drives, an old data stick, and a folder wrapped in oilpaper. Lian reached for the paper first. It was brittle, the edges yellowed. She unfolded it carefully.

  The handwriting was neat, precise. Diagrams, notes, fragments of what looked like genetic coding mixed with lines of network architecture. “This isn’t just medical research,” Lian said. “It’s part of the tracking system design.”

  Kai was already plugging one of the drives into his tablet. The screen filled with static before resolving into a directory of encrypted files. “These were archived before the fire,” he said. “And look at this—timestamps show they were last accessed two days before our parents died.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Lian didn’t move for a long moment. The light from the cracked window fell across her face, tracing the outline of her scar. “Copy everything,” she said.

  “I’m already doing it.” Kai’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “But this format’s ancient. I’ll need time to convert it.”

  She stood and checked the hallway. The air outside was silent. “We’ll finish here. Then we move.”

  Kai looked up. “You think someone else knows about this place?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But secrets like this don’t stay buried forever.”

  He didn’t reply, just went back to work. The hum of the tablet filled the quiet. Lian walked through the rest of the apartment, opening doors that led only to collapsed rooms and broken furniture. The place felt wrong somehow, like it remembered things that had happened here.

  When she came back, Kai had disconnected the drives and packed everything. “Done,” he said. “Copies on two backups. Original drives stay with us.”

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  They left the apartment through the side stairwell, keeping to the shadows. Outside, the street was alive again. Vendors called out to passing workers. A man pushed a cart of steaming buns. It was so ordinary it almost felt unreal after what they had just found.

  Kai followed Lian down a narrow lane until they reached a small garage. Their motorbike was waiting inside under a tarp. He strapped the pack to the back while Lian scanned the street again.

  “Where to now?” he asked.

  “There’s a contact in Shek Kip Mei,” she said. “Old tech smuggler. He owes me a favor.”

  Kai smirked faintly. “You mean he’s terrified of you.”

  “That too.”

  They rode through the maze of old roads, neon lights flickering against puddles from a recent rain. The city felt endless. Kai kept glancing at the mirror, expecting someone to follow. But the night remained still.

  At the edge of Shek Kip Mei, they stopped in front of a shuttered pawn shop. Lian knocked twice on the metal door, paused, then once more. After a few seconds, it creaked open, revealing a man in his sixties with thin white hair and sharp eyes.

  “Lian,” he said, sounding both nervous and relieved. “You’re still alive.”

  “Not for lack of trying,” she said. “We need your reader for legacy drives.”

  The man hesitated, looking at Kai. “He’s your brother?”

  Lian nodded. “He handles the data.”

  The old man gestured to them inside. The shop smelled of grease and solder. Stacks of circuit boards and half-dismantled computers filled every corner. Kai placed the hard drives on the counter.

  “These are old,” the man said, adjusting his glasses. “Very old. But I might have something that can read them.”

  “Can you do it here?” Lian asked.

  He nodded slowly. “Give me a few minutes.”

  While he worked, Kai leaned against the counter and whispered, “You think we can trust him?”

  Lian watched the man’s hands move steadily over the cables. “He doesn’t trust anyone either. That’s enough.”

  The reader whirred, and a faint image appeared on the small screen. A document loaded, lines of code mixed with text. The man squinted at it. “This… this isn’t ordinary data,” he said. “What did you bring me?”

  “Just make a copy,” Lian said.

  He looked uneasy but complied. The process took another five minutes. When it was done, he handed them a small encrypted drive. “That’s all I can do. Whatever this is, it’s dangerous. I can feel it.”

  Lian paid him and turned to leave. But before she reached the door, the man spoke again. “If this has anything to do with LSK, you should burn it. Some things are better lost.”

  She paused, her hand on the doorframe. “Not this,” she said. “Not anymore.”

  Outside, the night had thickened. They got back on the bike. Kai looked over his shoulder as they drove off, watching the pawn shop shrink behind them.

  He couldn’t shake the feeling that something had changed. Lian didn’t look back.