Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—The sound was flat, high-pitched, and completely uninterrupted. It wasn't the sound of a beating heart; it was the clinical death whistle of the diagnostic monitor echoing off the wet brick walls of the backyard."Hao? Hao, wake up! Look at me!" Lin Yue’s voice pierced through the mechanical screech. Her hands—no longer cold, translucent blue crystal, but warm, soft, human skin filled with rushing blood—clutched at my shoulders. She shook me, her fingers digging into my torn coat as my head rolled limply against her chest. "You just cleared the stone! You can't freeze now! Hao!""Get the external defibrillator from the main desk, Li! Move your legs!" Luo Bing roared. His shadow blockaded the doorway, his heavy armor clattering as he dropped his shattered steel blade into the mud. He lunged down beside us, his massive, scarred hands reaching out to check my carotid artery. "There's no pulse, Lin Yue. None. His neck is as cold as river ice.""No, no, no! That’s impo

The hurricane blast from the twin-rotor engines slammed downward into the clinic courtyard, ripping the remaining shingles off the wooden storage shed and scattering the wet white ash of the dissolved crystal into the gale. The blinding spotlights from thirty black gunships locked onto my chest, turning the muddy garden into a stage as bright as a surgery theater."Hao! They're landing heavy mechs on the eastern avenue!" Luo Bing yelled, his voice barely cutting through the deafening roar of the rotors as he dropped his shattered hilt and shoved Lin Yue behind his massive, bleeding shoulder plates. "The perimeter is completely blown! These aren't corporate rent-a-cops! Look at the heavy tactical shields!""I see them, Luo," I said, my voice flat, my boots digging deep into the wet earth as the sheer wind-force whipped my snowy white hair across my face.The side doors of the lead colossus snapped back with a heavy hydraulic hiss. A long, silver-plated gangway slammed down into the mud

The high-frequency vibration from the asphalt didn't stop. It wasn't a mechanical fault or a dying engine from the hovering gunships. It was a massive, subterranean roar that built up from the very core of A-City, deep beneath the broken concrete, the polluted pipes, and the ruined dandelions."Hao! The ground is breaking under my boots!" Luo Bing yelled, his voice strained as he planted his heavy, armor-clad feet into the shifting mud. He grabbed the porch railing with his left hand, his right arm locking securely around the linen bundle containing the sleeping infant, Jiang Tian. "The reading on the tactical visors... it’s not a numbers scale anymore! The gauges are completely shattering!""Lin Yue, get back to the clinic door! Now!" I barked, my voice cracking as a blinding, emerald-green light violently ripped straight through the cracks in the pavement right between our feet."I can't move, Hao!" Lin Yue gasped, her newly restored human fingers gripping my sleeve tightly as the a

Fei’s eyes exploded with a frantic, red-veined horror as my hand shot down through the silver-tinted rain. Before the bright red suicide capsule could even touch his dry, bleeding lower lip, my right hand locked onto his jawline like an iron vise. My thumb and index finger dug deep into the primary masseter muscle nodes beneath his ears, forcing his mouth to stay open in a rigid, helpless stretch.With a sharp flick of my left wrist, I jammed two fingers into the back of his throat, hitting the quick gag reflex meridian.Fei violently convulsed on the wet asphalt, his chest heaving as his body rejected the foreign object. The small crimson pill flew straight out of his mouth, clattering loudly against the iron steps of the clinic porch before bouncing directly into a muddy puddle filled with fine white crystal dust. The corporate neurotoxin instantly hissed, dissolving into a harmless, bubbly gray foam against the natural ancestral water."You don't get to audit your own exit strategy

"Five years since the central council fell, and the eastern gate still gets blocked by five o'clock in the morning," Luo Bing’s heavy voice rumbled from the arched entryway of the main pavilion. He walked into the courtyard, his massive boots making the polished stone tiles click. He wasn't wearing his old, dented dark-matter combat plates anymore. A pristine, charcoal-grey tunic with the silver eagle of Global Medical Security sat squarely on his broad shoulders. "Hao! We’ve got three transports from the Orion sector docking at the main avenue right now. Half of them are alien surgical residents from Galaxy 7, and the other half are local students from the provincial university. The queue is stretching past the second block.""Let them line up, Luo," I said, my voice calm as I stood near the courtyard's central medicine rack, my white hair neatly tied back with a simple linen band. I didn't need to look up to count the vials. My fingers moved across the cedar drawers by pure touch, p