On the thirtieth floor of a building with no name, a room hummed like a beehive of glass. Screens layered the walls, each one pulsing with faint blue graphs—heart-rate ribbons, cortisol spikes, proximity arcs—an orchestra of other people's feelings.
Wen Qingmei stood in the middle, hair slicked back, red coat thrown over her shoulders like a coronation mantle. She placed Bai Ming's signet ring on the console, pressed her thumb against the sensor, and watched the system blossom open.
LEGACY // ADMIN: WQ_01
SUBJECT Z-00 — LINK TRANSFER COMPLETE
HANDLER: WEN QINGMEI (ACTIVE)
She smiled, slow and exquisite.
"Hello, little phoenix," she said to the screen that mapped Bai Xueyi in pale blue light. "Let's see how you fly without your cage."
A tech hovered. "Ma'am, the Aegis-1 tracer on Mo Liuxian is intermittent since last night's blackout."
"Let him hide," Wen murmured. "Fear is a better leash than code."
The tech swallowed. "And Bai Ming…?"
Wen's smile didn't change. "Extinct species are so… nostalgic."
She lifted her gaze to a separate monitor: Mo Financial's share price ticking down by half-percent quivers; whispers in chatrooms she owned; editorials seeded with perfect timing. The empire was tilting. Soon it would need a public miracle to stand.
Wen tapped a command: MO FAMILY EMERGENCY SUMMON — 18:00
And below it: PRESS FEED HOLD — 18:05
"Prepare the altar," she said. "I'm done waiting to be chosen."
The safehouse smelled faintly of antiseptic and warm rain. Bai Xueyi slept for three hours—no visions, no fire—just a heaviness that let the body repair what ambition broke. When she woke, Dr. Lin Qiao had replaced the bandage at her wrist with a thin medicinal film. The cut was a pale crescent; the ache, a reminder she had evicted a ghost.
Mo Liuxian sat by the window, jacket on, tie off, head bowed. He wasn't praying. He was planning with his eyes closed.
"You watch me breathing when I sleep," she said.
He looked up. "I count. It keeps my hands from shaking."
"How many?"
"Four thousand, two hundred, nineteen."
She almost smiled. Then Xiao Rou stirred on the adjacent cot, pulling the oxygen mask away with a grimace. "Miss… I saw her."
Xueyi leaned over. "Wen Qingmei?"
"On the ferry," Xiao Rou whispered. "No fear. She wasn't following orders. She was giving them."
Xueyi's gaze flicked to Liuxian. He nodded; he'd reached the same conclusion before dawn. Whatever Bai Ming built, Wen had learned to drive.
Dr. Lin cleared her throat softly. "I've analyzed traces from the implant's shell. There's a low-frequency 'recall' tone encoded in LEGACY—audible, but barely. If Wen pushes it through public feeds, it won't control you like VX-β did… but your nervous system will remember. You'll feel it."
"Feel what?" Xueyi asked.
"Panic where love used to be," Lin said gently. "It's the cruelty of the design. Remove the device, the pathway remains."
Xueyi's jaw hardened. "Then we burn the pathways."
"Neuroplasticity is slower than revenge," Lin said. "But training helps. And a counter-tone helps more."
Liuxian straightened. "Can you build one?"
"I can build a bandage," Lin said. "What you need is a shield." Her eyes softened. "And time."
They had neither.
Liuxian's phone vibrated. Not a call—an alert routed through the last secure system he still trusted.
He held the screen out. MO FAMILY URGENT BOARD: 18:00. Then, a second line flowed in beneath like ink in water: MEDIA FEED RESERVED 18:05 — HOST: WEN QINGMEI.
Xueyi's fingers tightened on the blanket. "She's going to stage a public miracle."
"An engagement," Liuxian said flatly. "To 'stabilize' the markets. The board will bite."
"And if you refuse," Lin added, "she leaks LEGACY's edited 'proof', paints him a mad king and you a terrorist. Two birds, one public stoning."
Xueyi sat up. The room swayed, then steadied. "Then we split the field."
Liuxian shook his head. "We tried that at Pier 17."
"We weren't writing the rules then," she said. "We are now."
He held her gaze. "You want me to walk into that boardroom."
"Yes," she said. "With a mask you choose, not hers."
"You know what she'll demand."
"Yes."
Silence turned tight between them—fear and fury plucked like two strings on the same instrument.
Finally he said, "If I stand with Wen—publicly—will you survive that?"
"If we coordinate it," she said. "If it buys us thirty minutes for Lin to pull their feed and seed the truth." She turned to the doctor. "Can you hijack the press stream mid-broadcast?"
Lin exhaled through her nose. "Their studio is hardened, but Mo Financial's internal routing might still obey you." She looked at Liuxian. "If you can get to the primary switch in the old comms room."
He nodded once. "I can."
Xueyi stood, testing her balance. "I'll go to the east annex—pull the physical drives Wen stashed when she was still pretending to be a guest. She always hides the knife under the flowers."
"Not alone," Liuxian said.
"We're out of seconds," she said. "If I'm wrong, she wins. If I'm right, you'll have what you need when the cameras turn."
Xiao Rou's voice, thin but fierce: "I'll go with Miss."
Lin caught Xueyi's wrist. "If Wen pushes the recall tone, you may lose fine motor control for thirty seconds. That's enough to die."
"Then count for me," Xueyi said, a ghost of a smile. "Four thousand, two hundred, twenty."
Lin pressed a wafer-thin earpiece into her palm. "Counter-tone. It won't erase the fear. It will give you a handhold."
Xueyi slid it in. Her world narrowed to a pulse that wasn't hers and a man who had been turned into a timestamp and refused to stay one.
"Mo Liuxian," she said.
"Bai Xueyi."
"If we lose each other in there—"
"We won't," he said.
She nodded. "Then go be cold. I'll go be fire."
17:56 — Mo Financial Headquarters.
The ancestral boardroom had been renovated into a television set—lights in the ceiling, a podium at the far end, microphones like little crowns. The Mo elders took their seats along polished teak: men who had traded ships for skyscrapers and were now bargaining with shadows.
Wen Qingmei floated in five minutes late, crimson trailing, grief manufactured to perfection.
"Thank you for allowing me to help," she said, bowing just wrong enough to be modern. "President Mo and I agree: stability first."
Murmurs of approval ticked around the room. Cameras slid into place; the red tally lights glowed. Outside, the halls were hushed and ready—the way hospitals go quiet before a risky surgery.
Mo Liuxian walked in precisely at 18:00, suit cruel, eyes empty. The elders relaxed; the cameras leaned forward. He looked at Wen as if she were a contract that needed fewer adjectives.
She reached for his arm. He let her fingers rest on the fabric and not one millimeter deeper. Two actors under a weather god's eye.
"President Mo," the board chair said, "if you would speak to the markets about your intentions with Miss Wen."
Liuxian inclined his head. The press feeds rose in a soft electronic inhale.
At the same time — East Annex, Level 12.
Xueyi moved through a corridor that still remembered her perfume and had been reprogrammed to ignore it. Xiao Rou kept watch at the corner, one hand on a walkie jacked into Lin's patchwork network.
"Left cabinet," Xiao Rou whispered. "Behind the false back."
Xueyi levered the panel free. Stacked inside: rose-embossed boxes—Wen's—and beneath them, slim black drives labeled in a tidy hand.
LEGACY // TRAINING SETS
PAIRING INDEX — SUBJ Z-00
AEGIS EVENT LOGS — M.L.
Her fingers hovered. The air changed—like the moment before a storm. A tone bled into the hall, thin as a razor and twice as cruel.
Recall.
Her body remembered before her mind did. Hands shook. Knees loosened. The world tilted. Panic, pure as a bell, rang down old pathways.
"Miss!" Xiao Rou caught her under the arm.
"I'm—fine," Xueyi ground out. She wasn't. But in her ear, Lin's counter-tone rose—warm, human, imperfect. The panic wobbled, then found something to grip.
"Thirty seconds," Lin said calmly. "Breathe to four."
Xueyi counted. At three, her fingers obeyed. She slid the drives into a lined pouch, sealed it, and nodded to Xiao Rou. They moved.
A shadow peeled from the far wall.
Han Ze.
Not dead. Not even limping. He lifted a finger to his lips, as if to hush a child.
"Hello, Subject Zero," he said softly. "Your uncle left such messy heirs."
Xiao Rou leveled a stun baton. "Back."
He smiled a fraction. "I'm not here to kill you. I'm here to watch you choose which way to die."
Xueyi's eyes flicked to his hands. Empty. To his belt. Not empty: a card that matched the annex master key. A snake with all the doors.
"Choice is a trick you're too fond of," she said. "Get out of my way."
"Gladly," he murmured, stepping aside. "I prefer a front row seat."
He let them pass.
It was worse than a trap. It was an invitation.
18:05 — Boardroom / Live Feed.
Wen Qingmei's smile flicked on with the tally light. "For the sake of employees, investors, and the city we love," she said, voice steady as a lullaby, "President Mo and I will formalize our engagement. Tonight."
A collective exhale. Stock tickers would already be turning.
Liuxian's face didn't change. He glanced at the old comms room door—just a few meters, a lifetime away. He only needed thirty seconds inside to flip the route to Lin's black box.
"Do you have anything to say, President Mo?" the chair asked.
He reached for the microphone. The room leaned forward.
His phone buzzed once in his pocket, invisible to the feed: From: Lin // Route armed. Thirty-second window on your mark.
He lifted his eyes to the lens. His voice filled the building.
"Yes," he said. "I do."
On the safehouse screen, Lin's finger hovered over the injection key. In the annex elevator, Xueyi clutched the pouch and counted to four.
Wen slid her hand up his sleeve. Her pupils dilated, almost euphoric. "Then say it," she breathed.
Liuxian lowered the mic a fraction. His eyes found the comms room again—then the red light on the main camera—then, for a heartbeat, the stranger he had turned himself into to keep her alive.
He said, clearly, "I—"
The screens in the building shivered. Wen's recall tone surged to weapon strength—every hallway, every monitor, every phone—like a choir of knives.
In the elevator, Xueyi's knees buckled. The pouch slipped from her fingers. Drives skated on steel.
"Hold," Lin said in her ear, voice a thread. "Counter in three—two—"
In the boardroom, the main door swung open.
Mo Yuan, the patriarch, entered in his wheelchair, liver-spotted hands folded, eyes clear—and wrong. A blue vein pulsed at his temple with machine regularity.
"Grandfather," Liuxian said, startled despite the stage.
Mo Yuan smiled at Wen Qingmei with grandfatherly warmth that didn't reach his pupils. His voice came gentle—and modulated.
"Grandson," he said, "marry the girl."
The feed zoomed on his face—the beloved patriarch blessing the city.
Wen's smile bloomed in victory.
Liuxian's jaw flexed once.
He looked at the camera. He looked at Wen. He looked at the door that led to the switch that could save them—if he survived the next sentence.
He said, very evenly, "I accept."
The boardroom erupted. Stock tickers leapt. Fireworks somewhere in the city mistook obedience for romance.
Wen's hand trembled against his sleeve like a pulse claiming an artery.
And in the elevator, Xueyi pressed her palm to the floor, dragged the pouch back, and whispered—not to God, not to fate, but to the machine inside an old man's temple:
"Then let's see who gets to finish the ceremony."
Cliffhanger: Lin hits the injection key—the live feed stutters—and for half a second, the entire city sees a frame that should not exist: LEGACY's admin window with "HANDLER: WEN QINGMEI" before the screen snaps back to Wen's triumphant smile.