"Delivery service?"
Zhou Pei'en's casual question froze the blood in my veins.
Only three people knew that code phrase:
Me.
Xiao Zhou.
And Lin Xiaoyu—the newest "courier" I'd recruited.
We were compromised.
No—worse.
From the moment I'd accepted that "Free Wind" order, I'd been walking into his trap.
He wasn't hunting Lin Xiaoyu.
He was waiting for me.
The curtain fell silently behind me. On the floor, the little girl slept clutching her precious certificate.
Against thermal imaging, hiding was a joke.
Run? Three armed men outside.
Fight? Suicide.
Only one path left—move forward.
*"Not a sound."* My hand covered Lin Xiaoyu's mouth.
Her ash-gray eyes understood everything in the dark.
We ghosted through the classroom door.
Moonlight sliced the hallway into pale fragments.
No stairs. Too exposed.
Then I remembered—the school's secret.
A disused service elevator in the supply closet.
The rusted door shrieked as my pry bar forced it open.
The smell hit me instantly:
Antiseptic.
Formalin.
Oh fuck.
I knew that stench too well.
This wasn't a garage.
It was a lab.
I shoved Lin Xiaoyu inside. The elevator descended with metal-on-metal screams.
Thud.
Through the door crack—
No crumbling garage.
Just rows of stainless steel cabinets glowing under surgical lights.
A monstrous machine pulsed with data streams, cables snaking from the ceiling.
And beneath the chemical reek—
The coppery hint of blood.
Zhou Pei'en's base had always been here.
Beneath the elementary school.
And we'd just delivered ourselves to him.
--