The hotel room smelled of bleach and cigarette smoke. Kai had cracked the window even though the city air was thick with exhaust. He sat on the edge of the bed, tapping through surveillance feeds on his laptop.
“Fourth camera’s dead,” he said. “Signal went out fifteen minutes ago.”
Lian was sitting by the window, rolling a piece of gauze around her palm. The cut from last night had already started closing, but she still wrapped it tight. A habit. “Probably a rat,” she said without looking up.
Kai gave her a look. “You think a rat chewed through a fiber line that runs under a concrete floor?”
She smirked faintly. “Maybe it’s a smart rat.”
He let out a breath somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “You never take me seriously.”
“I do,” she said, eyes still on the skyline. “Just not your paranoia.”
“It’s not paranoia if they actually exist.”
That made her turn. His expression was steady, but the twitch in his fingers gave him away. Kai had been restless since the warehouse raid. Ten children rescued, one missing, and the silence after. It wasn’t just the mission that lingered—it was the sense that something had gone unfinished.
Lian stood and crossed the room. “What are you really worried about?”
He closed the laptop. “That we’re getting sloppy. We’ve hit three of their routes in two months, and now we’re sitting in a cheap hotel with cameras going out. Either they’re backing off or waiting.”
She sat beside him, the mattress sinking under their weight. “We can’t control when they move. We react. Like always.”
“That’s the problem.” He rubbed his temples. “We keep reacting. I want to be ahead for once.”
Lian watched him quietly. The boy who used to build toys from scrap metal now dismantled syndicates with code. He’d grown into his own kind of weapon, but sometimes she saw the child he had been—too sharp, too curious, too haunted.
She said softly, “You’re good at what you do. Don’t let fear turn it into obsession.”
He snorted. “That’s rich coming from you.”
She almost smiled. “Fair.”
The silence between them wasn’t uncomfortable. They’d learned to live inside it. The city hummed beyond the glass—sirens, traffic, someone arguing in Cantonese two floors below.
Then Kai’s phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen. “It’s Mei.”
Lian nodded. “Put her through.”
He tapped the earpiece. “Go ahead.”
Mei’s voice came through, low but urgent. “I’m at the docks. You both need to see this.”
Lian’s spine straightened. “Now?”
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“Now,” Mei said. “Bring masks.”
The call ended.
Kai looked at his sister. “You think it’s connected?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
The docks were half asleep when they arrived. Cargo containers loomed like sleeping beasts, metal skins reflecting the faint orange of distant lights. The air smelled of rust and brine.
Mei stood near a stack of crates, a cap pulled low over her face. She waved them over. “Keep quiet,” she said as they approached. “Someone dumped this an hour ago.”
She led them behind the crates. A tarp lay over a large metal drum, streaked with dried blood. Kai crouched, peeling it back. The smell hit first—metal, decay, something chemical.
Inside were body parts, packed in ice. Clean cuts, surgical precision.
Lian’s jaw clenched. “Organ trade?”
Mei shook her head. “Worse. Look closer.”
Kai grabbed a flashlight and aimed it inside. The organs were tagged—tiny labels printed with serial numbers and barcodes.
He scanned one with his phone. The result popped up on screen. Property of LSK Biomedical Division.
Lian exhaled slowly. “So they’re recycling their victims now.”
Kai muttered, “They’ve got a sense of efficiency, I’ll give them that.”
Mei’s voice dropped. “It’s not just that. The ice—see the tint?”
Lian crouched. There was a faint bluish glow under the surface, subtle but unnatural. “Coolant compound,” she said. “Used to preserve living tissue for gene splicing.”
Kai looked up sharply. “Which means these weren’t dead when they started cutting.”
The words hung between them.
Lian stood, her face unreadable. “Who found this?”
“Port worker,” Mei said. “Didn’t stick around. I wiped the cameras before I called you.”
“Smart,” Kai said.
They all went quiet again. The sound of waves hitting concrete filled the air.
Finally, Lian said, “We burn it.”
Mei hesitated. “You sure? We could trace it—”
“No,” Lian said. “They’ll trace us first. We clean it.”
Kai didn’t argue. He started unpacking fuel from the van while Mei stood lookout. Lian struck a match and tossed it into the drum. The flames caught quick, hissing as they hit the coolant. Blue and orange twisted together, reflecting in their eyes.
Mei watched it burn. “You think this was a message?”
Lian said, “If it was, I’m not reading it.”
When it was done, only ash and molten metal remained.
Kai kicked at a piece of slag. “They’re getting bolder.”
“Or desperate,” Mei offered.
Lian shook her head. “Desperation makes people hide. This—” she gestured at the ruin “—this is arrogance.”
They drove back in silence. The van’s headlights carved through mist rolling off the harbor. Mei dropped them off a few blocks from the hotel, saying she’d circle around to check for tails.
As soon as the van disappeared, Kai spoke. “We need to hit back.”
“Not yet,” Lian said.
“When?”
“When we know where to strike.”
He laughed under his breath. “We’ll never know enough for you.”
She stopped walking. “You think I enjoy waiting? Every time we go in blind, we risk ending up like the people in that drum. You think I want that for us?”
Her voice wasn’t raised, but it carried. He looked away, jaw tight.
“I just—” he started, then stopped. “I just don’t want to keep losing ground.”
Lian stepped closer, resting a hand on his shoulder. “We’re not losing. We’re surviving. There’s a difference.”
He nodded, though it didn’t reach his eyes.
When they reached the hotel, the fourth camera was working again. The feed flickered back to life as Kai checked his laptop.
“See?” Lian said quietly. “Sometimes rats fix things too.”
He laughed, just a little. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to fill the space between them.
