2025-09-11 15:23:51
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Chapter 20 : The plan
I came back to headquarters with my coat heavy from soot, my hands still shaking from the adrenaline that never quite left me after a fight. The kind of shaking that comes from knowing you danced close to a switchblade and the music stopped when you wanted it to. The rest of them moved around me like planets around a star ,almost like familiar gravitational pulls, small adjustments when I passed. Jiang clapped me on the shoulder so hard it hurt; Duan Yu tried to hide a grin behind a bandage on his knuckle; Zhao Wei didn’t take his eyes off his tablet. Xue’er looked at me like I was an accident she hadn’t authorized.“Status?” I asked, because motion answers anxiety.“Viper vanished,” Jiang said. “His men retreated. Losses are heavy on both sides. We tapped the Syndicate comms and there’s chatter, they are angry and wounded. They’re regrouping.”“And Ember?” I asked.Jiang’s jaw tightened. “She’s with us. She saved your life, but we still need to sort out why she was in the Syndicate’
Chapter Nineteen: The syndicate
The Syndicate didn’t just declare war. They sent me an invitation.Ember’s face on that screen wasn’t submission, it was a map. The way her eyes tilted at the end, the brief pause before she spoke, the cut of the light on her cheek, none of it was accident. She knew I’d be watching closer than anyone. She knew I’d read what others couldn’t.But even if I trusted the signal she’d left, the fact remained: the Serpent Syndicate had her in their den. And they wanted me to come looking.Fine.I’ve never been afraid of walking into a serpent’s nest. You just have to remember to bring a bigger knife.****Zhao Wei’s trace gave us a location. Not exact, but close enough to draw blood. The video’s signal bounced off a relay in the industrial quarter which was the old textile mills, most of them abandoned, now used for everything from counterfeit liquor to human trafficking.By noon, we had a plan.Jiang would take a small team through the sewer line that fed under the mills. Duan Yu would han
Chapter eighteen"
The city doesn’t sleep, but it does change masks.By the time Zhao Wei had gathered the others, the skyline had traded gold for steel. The night was alive with neon veins and the low thrum of engines going too fast down wet asphalt. It was the kind of night when the city whispered secrets to anyone reckless enough to listen.We met in the war room. Not the polished boardroom where shareholders pretended to hold knives, but the basement beneath my central tower. Concrete walls, reinforced doors, a table big enough to seat an army but small enough to remind us this wasn’t about comfort.Jiang came first, his limp heavier than usual, mountain wounds not yet forgiven by his body. He didn’t complain; he never did. He just sat with his back straight, eyes burning with a soldier’s loyalty.Duan Yu arrived next, smelling of cigarettes and city smog, his leather jacket damp from the rain. He flicked his lighter three times before pocketing it, a nervous habit that told me he already knew the w
Chapter seventeen: The fire
The city never gave you the courtesy of a slow morning.By the time I reached the office at dawn, the skyline was still painted in streaks of copper, but my phone had already burned through six calls and a dozen encrypted messages. Three were from Zhao Wei, two from ministries that pretended not to be ministries, and one from a man I hadn’t spoken to in years.The first message mattered most.Warehouse fire in the South District. One of ours.The words were simple, but the implications weren’t. The South District was where we stored defense-grade composites under shell companies and subcontractors. A fire there wasn’t just bad optics it was a declaration.I dialed Zhao Wei as I walked through the glass doors.“Casualties?” I asked.“Two. Both security detail.” His voice was rough from smoke; I could hear it in the way he coughed between syllables. “But the blaze didn’t start natural. Accelerants everywhere. Someone knew what they were hitting.”“Police?”“On paper, yes. In reality, t
Chapter Sixteen: Shadows in the Glass
The city was never quiet. Even before the wheels of the chopper touched down on the private helipad, I could hear it — the hum of traffic, the drone of construction, the heartbeat of a place where every breath was a transaction and every streetlight doubled as a spotlight for someone’s ambition. After days of ice, stone, and silence, the noise hit like a wave. We disembarked in staggered order. Jiang and Duan Yu went first, both carrying the stiffness of men who’d left too much of themselves behind on that mountain. Xue’er followed, her scarf pulled high against the wind, eyes darting across the skyline as if she wasn’t ready to believe we were home. Ember was last. She didn’t speak. She just stepped down, the rotor wash snapping her hood back, revealing eyes that didn’t match the calm in her face. She scanned the rooftop perimeter, every shadow, every vent, as if she expected Han’s men to crawl out of the HVAC. I knew that feeling, the mind still stuck in enemy territory long a
Chapter 15 : Ice and Knives
The ice shelf wasn’t a place for human beings.It was a frozen wound in the side of the mountain, the kind that never healed. A fifty-meter crawl along a ledge no wider than a coffin lid, with nothing but wind and gravity waiting to collect your bones if you slipped.Jiang was still pale from his near fall. His breath steamed in short bursts, each one a reminder of how close he’d come to being a memory. Xue’er kept pace beside me, not saying a word, but I caught the way her gloved hand never strayed far from her harness buckle. Once bitten, twice ready to save someone again.Ember was behind us. I didn’t have to look to feel her presence.The thing about suspicion is that once it’s in your blood, it becomes a kind of fever. Every sound she made, every pause, every hitch in her breathing felt like an answer to a question I didn’t yet know how to ask.The wind howled through the chasm, carrying flecks of ice sharp enough to sting through the mask. My visor blurred with frost. I wiped it
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