Hamasen, this is where the city meets the sea. The train slowed down and the brake screeched.
〔 SECTOR: HAMASEN MARITIME INTERFACE 〕
〔 STATUS: PERIMETER BREACHED 〕
〔 ATMOSPHERE: DIESEL / NACl / CORRUPTION 〕
HSSSSS.
I could smell the ocean air, as soon as the doors opened. It smelled like diesel and salt.
"Dad," A-Lan whispered, her voice barely audible. She looked at me with eyes of concern.
I didn't answer. I couldn't. Her voice saying the word 'Dad' felt familiar; it hit me with a surge of unshed tears. It was like a piece of data my brain recognized, but the System refused to execute. I just leaned on her, my weight a heavy burden for her small frame, and together we stepped out of the train and onto the platform of the Hamasen terminal.
"The harbor," I managed to rasp, my voice was losing its strength and I was losing my mind.
"We... have to cross. The... háidfnids... the border."
"I know, Wei. We're going to the docks. Just keep your feet moving."
We walked past the old, rusted rail tracks of the Hamasen terminal, and we moved toward the ferry pier. The crowds were thick here, people smelling of sunscreen and fried seafood, but they all felt like hollow shells.
Then, I saw the water.
It wasn't blue. It wasn't even black. It was a viscous grey that shimmered with the sheen of spilled oil.
"Lead," I muttered, staring at the Kaohsiung Harbor.
"The water is... it's lead."
It looked thick enough to walk on, or sink into like wet cement. Beyond the lead water was Cijin island, a low, dark strip of land punctuated by the lighthouse—a giant, unblinking white eye scanning the horizon.
〔 ALERT: TOPOGRAPHICAL CHANGE 〕
〔 TARGET: THE FORGOTTEN ISLAND 〕
〔 CROSSING THE INTERNATIONAL DATE LINE 〕
We reached the ferry terminal. The entrance was narrow.
"Identification," I said as we approached the turnstiles.
A-Lan didn't blink. She tapped the EasyCard again. BEEP. The sound of the sonar.
"Checkpoint cleared, Wei. Move."
We shuffled onto the ferry. The vessel was a blocky beast that hummed with a low-frequency vibration that rattled my teeth. We didn't go into the air-conditioned cabin. We stayed on the deck, at the railing, hidden behind a row of parked scooters that smelled of oil and rubber.
The ferry lurched forward. The engines roared, throwing a cloud of thick, black smoke into the godless sky.
"The sky," I whispered, looking up.
There were no stars. There were no satellites. Just a vast, empty space that looked like a television tuned to a dead channel. It felt like the Agency had simply forgotten to finish rendering this part of the world.
"No signal," I said.
"Godless... khaewwq…."
"The signal doesn't matter anymore," A-Lan said.
She stood beside me, her hands gripping the rusted railing so hard her small knuckles were white. The wind caught her hair and it whipped it across her face.
"We're almost out, Wei. Just across the lead."
I looked at her—really looked at her. The "Little Sunflower" was losing her bloom. She looked exhausted, like a child who had carried a man's life for a hundred miles only to finally reach the edge of a cliff.
〔 SYSTEM STATUS: ORBITAL DECAY 75% 〕
〔 CRITICAL DATA FRAGMENTED: DAUGHTER / PROTECTION / SORROW 〕
"Here's a sticker," A-Lan said, trying to cheer me up.
It was her favorite: a small, yellow sunflower sticker. She reached up and pressed it onto my forehead.
The sensation was small—a patch of adhesive heat pressing against the center of my brow. I stared at her, the sticker feeling like a warm, heavy weight between my eyes. To the eyes of many, it was just a cheap piece of plastic. To me, it was a beacon she'd placed on me so that if my signal finally flatlined, the extraction teams could find my corpse in this dark and cold world.
"The marker..." I whispered, my voice rattling like a loose fan belt.
"Active."
"Yeah, Dad. It's active," A-Lan said.
She didn't pull her hand away immediately. Her fingers lingered on the edge of the sticker, her thumb brushing against my skin. It was the only part of the world that wasn't vibrating.
I looked down at the "Lead Water." We were in the middle of the channel now. The wake of the boat looked like whip cream. The "Iron Spike" in my skull gave another thump, trying to drive the sunflower out of my head. My vision doubled, then tripled, until I can no longer understand the world.
"Don't.…. m-mhmm… lán... lí... dsnaiwdw..."
I squeezed my eyes shut. I was losing it, I can no longer speak Mandarin again. The encryption was rotting from the inside out.
〔 WARNING: SYSTEM INTEGRITY 15% 〕
〔 UNIDENTIFIED MEMORY LEAK: OCTOBER / TAIWAN / RAIN 〕
"Eniw fosfn la mo" I rasped.
"You... don't cry…. dismdfin...difnz "
A-Lan didn't flinch at the broken sounds. She just leaned her head against my arm, shielding me from the other passengers. She knew the code was failing.
The engine note of the ferry shifted. A deep, thrumming groan as the bow began to bank. Ahead, Cijin appeared. It wasn't just an island, it was a fortress of metal, seafood stalls, and shadows. The lighthouse on the hill swept its beam across the sky.
"Border crossing in T-minus sixty seconds," A-Lan announced. Her voice had that hard, brittle edge again. The Handler was back.
"Ready your gear, Wei. No more speaking until we're off the vessel. The signal here is heavily monitored."
I nodded, the sunflower sticker crinkling on my forehead. I felt like a marked man.
The ferry slammed into the Cijin dock with a violent shudder. The heavy metal ramp dropped—CLANGGG.
〔 SECTOR: THE FORGOTTEN ISLAND 〕
〔 STATUS: EXTRADITION ZONE 〕
"Move," I managed, my right leg dragging through the oil and exhaust fumes.
We moved off the boat, blending into the swarm of scooters and tourists. I looked back once at the leaden water and the path we had traveled. The Kaohsiung skyline was hidden behind a thick, grey fog. The border was crossed. The sky was still godless. And as I followed the pink backpack into the narrow, salt-choked alleys of Cijin, I realized the sunflower on my forehead was the only sun I had left.
〔 SIGNAL STRENGTH: LOW 〕
〔 DESTINATION: THE DERELICT 〕
〔 CLOCK: 20:42 PM 〕
The narrow streets of Cijin were full of spies. Every seafood stall was a tactical listening post; every tourist with a camera was a reconnaissance unit capturing our silhouettes against the strobe of the lighthouse.
My right leg felt like concrete, I was no longer walking. I was a machine dragging its own wreckage through the salt air.
"Nearly there," A-Lan whispered.
She pulled me away from the bright lights of the main market, steering us toward the western shore where the wind roared louder and the smell of rot was thick. We entered a a lot of alleyways where the shadows weren't just dark—they were heavy.
〔 WARNING: GPS DATA TERMINATED 〕
〔 ANALOG NAVIGATION ONLY 〕
〔 TARGET COORDINATE: THE RUINED 〕
The sand, it was beautiful. The world became a shifting, unstable surface of crushed shells and dried kelp. I could see it now—the Extraction Vessel. To a civilian, it was just a fishing boat, half-buried in the sand. To me, it was a sleek, black-hulled stealth craft, waiting to whisk the Asset into international waters.
"The….Exitjsaan…." I rasped. My head gave a vicious throb.
"The... extregniion…..shriwp."
A-Lan didn't correct me. She just kept hauling me toward it, her boots sinking into the wet sand with every step.
"Get inside the hull, Wei. We have to secure the perimeter before the Shadow finds the shoreline."
We climbed through a hole in the rusted wood. The interior smelled of old fish and the deep, damp cold of a tomb. The "Iron Spike" in my skull was no longer a pulse, the pain was so immense that I was about to pass out.
〔 STATUS: TOTAL SYSTEM FAILURE IMMINENT 〕
〔 BIOMETRIC READOUT: 8% 〕
〔 RECOMMENDATION: FINAL UPLOAD 〕
"The briefcase," I choked out, collapsing against the damp, of the hull.
I looked at the pink backpack. It flickered. It turned into a high-security containment unit. A-Lan sat in the sand inside the boat. She slowly pulled the backpack from her shoulders. Her face was pale.
"The data is safe, Agent," she said. Her voice was flat. Empty. The mission was almost over, and she knew it.
I reached out, my cold fingers trembling as I tried to touch the bag.
"Open it," I commanded. My voice was shaking, a broken radio transmission from a sinking ship.
"I need to…... verify.... the truth."
A-Lan hesitated. She looked at me, then at the sticker on my forehead. The yellow sunflower was peeling at the edges from the sea spray. Then, she slowly pulled the zipper.
I didn't see the GameBoy. I didn't see the candy wrappers.
The system flared blue one last time, a blinding, artificial light that erased the dark.
〔 ALERT: SECURITY OVERRIDE 〕
〔 BRIEFCASE ACCESSED 〕
〔 RECOVERING REDACTED FILES... 〕
"Wei," she whispered, she didn't call me Agent. She didn't call me Dad.
I looked inside the bag. I looked for the microfilm. I looked for the secrets of the Agency. But as the "Iron Spike" drove through the last of my sanity, the blue text shattered.
The brackets turned red. Then white. Then... they disappeared.
〔 SYSTEM CRASH 〕
〔 TOTAL BLACKOUT 〕
I reached into the bag and my hand touched something soft. Not metal. Not glass. Just a small, stuffed white rabbit with one ear.
And then the light went out.
Everything was paling away.
It was just white.
The salt.
The sky.
The girl.
〔 TRANSMISSION ENDS 〕