We moved through the Kaohsiung Metro, hoping the crowd would help us blend in against the Shadow. Thousands of "background noise" units—office workers, students, and tourists—swirled around us, their collective movement creating a perfect screen for our thermal signatures.
I sighed. "A-Lan, hold my hand…."
My right hand was cold and felt heavy. I looked at A-Lan and wondered, as I often did: what would I be without her? It was rare for such a young kid to have a resolve as iron-clad as an adult's. Her eyes scanned the exits constantly, her hand never leaving the strap of her pink backpack. She wasn't just my handler; she was the only reason I hadn't been deactivated years ago.
"I've got you, Wei," she whispered.
Her fingers interlaced with my cold, weak ones. She began leading me toward the row of shining silver gates.
"The perimeter is tight," she warned.
"We need to clear the scanners before the next wave of Shadows arrives."
When we reached the ticket gates, I pulled out my "clearance token"—a plastic EasyCard—but my hand shook so violently that I nearly dropped it between the floor tiles.
"Easy," A-Lan said.
She took the card from my numb fingers and tapped it for me. BEEP! The sound resonated like a sonar pulse. She pulled me through, her small frame acting as a stabilizer for my swaying, weakening body.
We stepped onto the long escalator, descending into the gut of the city. Above us, the ceiling opened up into a massive, circular hall of colored glass—the Dome of Light. It was beautiful, but also a terrifying explosion of color. To a civilian, it was a tourist attraction; to me, it was a threat.
"Be careful, A-Lan. This is a massive psychic mapping array," I reminded her, my voice straining.
"A terminal designed to scan the brain waves of every citizen in the sector."
As the light hit my eyes, the "Iron Spike" in my skull gave a vicious twist.
"Don't…. kuan mo rle erd ead strwl…." I rasped.
I blinked. My tongue felt like it was swelling, filling my mouth with dry leather. I tried to warn her more about the mapping array, but the encryption was failing. The words were leaching out of my brain before they could even reach my lips. I couldn't speak properly, and my head felt as if it were being struck by a sea of needles, each one penetrating deep into my cortex.
I stumbled. The floor was no longer solid; it was vibrating like an earthquake. A-Lan's grip was the only thing keeping me from drifting into the overhead scanner array. My vision smeared, the beautiful colors of the dome melting into a sludge of burning light.
〔 ALERT: NEURAL BUFFER OVERFLOW 〕
〔 ERROR: BROCA'S SECTOR COLLAPSE 〕
〔 INITIATING EMERGENCY ENCRYPTION 〕
"Wei? Wei, look at me!" A-Lan's voice hit me, sharp with concern.
She wasn't looking at the exits anymore. She was looking at my face, her expression a mix of intense focus and raw terror.
I tried to tell her that the Shadow was using the colors to track our bio-signatures. I tried to tell her to stay in the blind spots of the pillars, but my jaw felt as if it were wired shut with rusted cables.
"The…. lán-beh…. kùnsia dksd wq….. the intercept..." I choked out.
The words were wrong. They weren't Mandarin. They weren't even the tactical slang we used for the mission. It was a new language—a broken dialect leaching out from the deepest, forgotten corners of my memory.
I stumbled again, my right leg dragging like a piece of dead hardware. The platform didn't feel like stone; it felt like a non-Newtonian fluid, rippling under my boots. A-Lan caught my weight, her small shoulder digging into my ribs to keep me upright.
"I can't… decode the frequency!" she hissed, her voice trembling but low.
"Wei, stay with me. The extraction pod is arriving. Use the standard channel! TALK TO ME!!"
I opened my mouth, but the "Iron Spike" gave a cruel, hot pulse.
"〔 Gúa.... gúa bô-huat-tō.... 〕" I choked.
"Signal is... 〔 bô--khì... 〕"
〔 ALERT: SYSTEM REBOOT FAILED 〕
〔 PRIMARY SPEECH UNIT: OFFLINE 〕
〔 DATA CORRUPTION: 62% 〕
I looked at her, and for a terrifying second, the blue text in my eyes flickered to white. The "Little Sunflower" faded. The Handler was gone. In her place sat a terrified eight-year-old girl in a pink shirt, holding onto a dying man's hand in a cold and bustling subway station.
My heart hammered against my ribs, it was a frantic, irregular drum. I tried to reach for my "tactical weapon," the iron spoon, but my fingers wouldn't curl. They were just meat. Dead weight.
"Dad!!" she whispered, the word slipping out, sharp and real. It hit me harder than a bullet.
The System screeched in my ears.
〔 DANGER: UNAUTHORIZED CONTACT 〕
〔 SUBJECT ID: ....DAUGHTER? 〕
〔 ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. 〕
I bit my tongue until the taste of hot iron flooded my mouth, using the pain to force the "System" back online. The blue text flared back to life, bruising the air.
"The... lán-beh-khì..." I forced out, my voice sounding like gravel being ground in a mortar.
"The harbor. Move... move to the tunnel."
The wind began to howl from the dark throat of the tracks—the cold, electric breath of the approaching train. The platform lights strobed against the concrete. It was the 8:15 PM train to Hamasen.
HSSSSSSS.
The doors slid apart—a pressurized airlock opening into a white vacuum.
"Initiate….. boarding," I rasped.
A-Lan didn't hesitate. She grabbed the sleeve of my vest and hauled it. She moved with the desperate strength of someone trying to drag a wreck out of a fire. We lurched into the train, collapsing into a corner seat.
The doors sealed shut. The world outside the window began to slide, then blur, then scream.
〔 SECTOR: EXTRACTION POD / HARBOR BOUND 〕
〔 STATUS: TRANSIT COMMENCED 〕
〔 BIO-SIGNS: CRITICAL 〕
I leaned my head against the cold glass. The sea of needles in my brain was turning into a tide—a massive wave of white noise. Every flash of the tunnel lights was like a hammer blow. A-Lan sat next to me, her pink backpack pulled tight against her chest. She reached out and took my lead-heavy hand again. Her skin was warm. It was the only thing in the universe that didn't feel like it was made of plastic or junk.
"Wei," she whispered, looking at the grey reflection in the window.
"The code... the one you were speaking. I don't know it."
"It's... the old frequency," I managed, my eyes fluttering.
"Before... before the Agency.... found me. Long….. range.... transmission."
I closed my eyes. The blue text was dimming, fading into a single, pulsing line of violet light. I didn't know where we were going. I didn't know if the Shadow was already in the next train, holding a syringe or a gun. All I knew was the weight of her hand and the thump-thump of the wheels on the tracks.
Moving south.
Always south.
Toward the boat, and the salt, and the final breakage.
〔 ORBITAL DECAY: 70% 〕
〔 STANDBY FOR HARD RESET... 〕