The steam rising from the plate of Hainanese chicken rice was thick, smelling of ginger, garlic, and rendered fat. To anyone else in the Maxwell Food Centre, it was a five-dollar lunch. To Tan Wei Xian, it was a hallucination."Boy, you okay or not? You staring at the rice for five minutes already. If you don't want to eat, give the seat to someone else leh!"Wei Xian flinched, his fork clattering against the plastic table. He looked up, his eyes bloodshot and unfocused. An elderly woman in a floral blouse stood over him, clutching a tray of fish soup."I’m… I’m okay," Wei Xian rasped. His throat felt like it had been scrubbed with sandpaper. "Sorry, Auntie. Just a bit dizzy.""Dizzy? Your face pale like ghost, you know?" She squinted at him, sliding into the seat opposite. "You young people always skip breakfast, then go under the sun. Later faint then you know. Eat lah, don't waste the food. Very hard to queue one."Wei Xian looked back at the chicken rice. The last thing he remembe

The world tilted, a cacophony of ringing glass and scorched air. Wei Xian’s shoulder slammed into Gabriel’s chest, the momentum carrying them both through the doorway and onto the hard tile of the apartment floor."Stay down!" Wei Xian hissed, his fingers digging into the fabric of Gabriel’s shirt.Gabriel didn’t panic. He moved with the fluid grace of a man who lived in the line of fire, pinning Wei Xian’s wrists to the floor in a split second. "The hell was that, Tan? Who’s targeting you?"Wei Xian looked toward the shattered hallway window. There was no second blast. No sound of boots on the stairs. The "laser sight" was gone—or maybe it had never been there. The Mark VII hummed a low, discordant note in his skull.[THREAT ANALYSIS: ENVIRONMENTAL ANOMALY. NEURAL FEEDBACK MIMICKING COMBAT STIMULI.]Wei Xian closed his eyes, his breath coming in ragged hitches. "False alarm. It was… a transformer. The power box outside must have blown."Gabriel didn’t let go. He stared down at Wei Xi

The red light on the monitor pulsed like a dying heart. Wei Xian grabbed the guard, Ah Beng—who had finally managed to stammer his name—and shoved him toward the narrow, slime-slicked drainage pipe."Move! Don't look back, just crawl!" Wei Xian shouted, the hiss of the gas becoming a literal death rattle in the confined space."Bro, is that—is that smoke? Why is it pink?" Ah Beng coughed, his voice cracking."It’s not smoke, it’s a death sentence. Keep your shirt over your nose and keep moving!" Wei Xian jammed the antiviral crate into the crawlspace and kicked the man’s heels. "If you stop, you become a permanent resident of this vault."They tumbled out into the humid undergrowth of the nature reserve ten minutes later, gasping for air. Wei Xian didn't stop to admire the moonlight. He hauled the crates to a hidden cache beneath a tarp, his hands moving with the efficiency of a man who had spent three years preparing for this exact moment."You’re insane," Ah Beng wheezed, wiping mud

The blast at the Marina Bay Sands back-lit the cityscape like a dying sun. The truck lurched, tires screaming as they tore across the pavement, but a second shot shattered the side mirror, sending shrapnel spraying into the cabin."He’s actually going to do it, the bastard!" Ah Beng yelled, wrestling the wheel as the truck fishtailed. "He’s going to put a hole in our heads!"Wei Xian braced his feet against the floorboards, his hand tight around the crates in the back. "He’s not aiming for our heads, Beng. He’s aiming for the tires. He wants us alive to question us.""That’s supposed to make me feel better?" Sarah crouched in the footwell, her eyes wide with shock. "Who is that man? Why does he want to kill us?""He doesn't want to kill us, Sarah. He wants to save the world, and he thinks he’s the only one with the manual," Wei Xian snapped, staring at the side mirror as Gabriel’s black SUV surged through the smoke of the explosion, closing the gap."He’s coming up fast!" Ah Beng shou

The tunnel smelled of stagnant water and old secrets. Wei Xian shoved the grate aside, pulling himself into the humid night air of a back alley in Bukit Timah. Gabriel followed, his breathing heavy and ragged, clutching his shoulder."You good, Gabe?" Wei Xian whispered, pulling his tactical light into a low-power mode."Just a scratch, man. Stop fussing," Gabriel grunted, his face pale under the streetlamps."A scratch doesn't make you sweat like you've been running a marathon in a sauna. That bite looks deeper than you're letting on.""I said I'm fine. Focus on the exit, Tan. The military patrols are already sweeping the main roads.""You heard that transmission, right? 'No survivors.' They aren't looking for patients, they’re looking for targets," Wei Xian said, checking his HUD. "We have twenty minutes before they seal the Bukit Timah expressway. If we don't hit the bunker by then, we're stuck in the open."They stepped out of the alley into a neighborhood HDB block. The silence w