Kai insisted he was fine, but Lian could see the way his fingers trembled every time he reset the drone’s internal clock. He tried to hide it, pretend the shaking was just leftover adrenaline from the warehouse fight, but she had seen him after real battles. He usually bounced back fast. This was different. It sat in him like a stone.

  They were back in an old walk up apartment on Tai Ping Shan Street. It belonged to a dead friend of one of their dead friends. The kind of place no one visited anymore. The windows rattled whenever wind blew down from the Mid Levels. The floorboards squeaked like they were complaining. Everything smelled faintly like dust and ginger tea.

  Kai sat on the floor, legs crossed, a nest of gear spread around him. Wires everywhere. Half an old motherboard. A cracked phone screen he was trying to repurpose as a relay. His lips were pressed in a thin line while he worked.

  Lian leaned against the peeling wall, wiping down her knives. She watched him through the reflection on the blade.

  “You are thinking too loud,” she said.

  Kai did not look up. “I am thinking at normal volume.”

  “You sound like a generator.”

  “Maybe I am a generator.”

  “You are very annoying for a generator.”

  He snorted softly, the small kind of laugh that told her he was listening. She set the knife aside and sat next to him, close enough that her shoulder brushed his.

  “Tell me what is actually going on,” she said.

  Kai kept working, but his voice lowered. “It is nothing.”

  “No.”

  He sighed and finally looked at her. There was something tight in his expression. His eyes were still a little wild from earlier.

  “I did not like the way I reacted in that warehouse,” he said.

  “You reacted the way anyone would.”

  “No. I went too far.”

  He said it quietly. Not guilty, not proud. Just stating a truth he did not know what to do with.

  Lian studied him for a moment. The bruises on his face were already blooming dark purple under the dim light. A cut on his cheek had reopened when he washed it earlier. He looked young again. Not childish young, but young in the way someone looks when they are scared of something inside themselves.

  “You defended yourself,” she said. Her voice almost gentle.

  “I know that,” Kai said. “It is not the part I am worried about.”

  She waited.

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  Kai let the loose wire drop from his hands. “I liked it. For a second. The fear in his eyes. The way everything felt simple. And then when it was over, I felt sick. I still feel sick.”

  Lian inhaled slowly. She pressed a hand to the back of his neck and squeezed just enough to remind him he was still here, still real, still human.

  “You are not losing yourself,” she said. “You were in danger. It happens.”

  Kai dropped his head forward like he did not fully believe her, but the contact seemed to help. He drew a slow breath.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But I do not want to become someone who does not care.”

  “You are not that person.”

  “Would you tell me if I was becoming like that?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Of course.”

  “Even if it upset me?”

  “Especially then.”

  That earned a faint smile from him. He picked up the relay board again, but his hands were steady now.

  Lian watched him for a few more seconds before shifting her focus. “Did you get anything useful from the drone logs?”

  He nodded. “Enough to confirm the warehouse team was not freelance. They were organized. Uniform comms, shared frequency, layered encryption. They move like LSK training. Not top tier, but close.”

  “So they were following us.”

  “At least following our work,” he said. “They were already watching the building before we even got there.”

  Lian’s jaw tightened. “They knew our target.”

  “And they cleaned before we arrived.”

  “So the files we pulled…”

  “Too little, too late,” Kai said.

  Lian leaned her head back against the wall. She closed her eyes, letting the frustration settle instead of spike. They were chasing shadows again. Empty rooms. Wiped drives. Bodies already turned to ash before they even reached them.

  “So we start again,” she said.

  Kai nodded. “We start again.”

  Silence settled in the room. Not peaceful, but steady. The kind of stillness that came after survival. Their breathing was the only sound, along with street noises drifting up from below. Someone arguing in Cantonese. A motorcycle revving. A cat yowling like it was auditioning for a horror movie.

  Lian opened her eyes and glanced at him. He had leaned his shoulder against hers without ever noticing he did it. She let him stay like that.

  “You need sleep,” she said.

  “I need to finish this first.”

  “You need sleep more.”

  “You always say that.”

  “Because you always need it.”

  Kai frowned at the wires like they had personally insulted him. “I am not tired.”

  “You closed your eyes for five seconds just now.”

  “I was thinking.”

  “You were falling asleep upright like an elderly man on the MTR.”

  Kai huffed. “Fine. Maybe a little tired.”

  She nudged him lightly. “Go lie down. I will finish the relay.”

  “You do not even like tech.”

  “I can follow your notes.”

  “My notes are in shorthand.”

  “I can still follow them.”

  “No you cannot.”

  She gave him a look. He gave her the exact same look back. Eventually he slid his tools aside and stretched out on the floor. He did not even bother with a blanket. He just pressed an arm under his head and let out a long exhale.

  Lian finished the relay board carefully, mostly guessing her way through Kai’s scrawled sketches. She did not need perfection. Just something that would keep them off grid for a few hours.

  After a while she checked on him. He was already asleep. His breathing was deep and even. His face looked peaceful for the first time since the warehouse. The kind of peace he never let himself admit he needed.

  Lian sat beside him and brushed a loose strand of hair off his forehead. She did not say anything. She did not need to. She simply kept watch, like she always had.