The Smell of Bleach

The heavy door closed with a thud behind him. Compared to the streets outside, the interior of the mansion was preposterously quiet.

There were no holographic advertisements, no golden statues, and no pulsing, restless background music.

There were only ash-white high walls, black bushes trimmed into neat geometric shapes, and a pungent, heavy smell of bleach lingering in the air.

Li Wei sniffed the air.

He knew this smell all too well.

When disposing of corpses in the bottom hive, people also splashed plenty of cheap disinfectant to prevent the spread of plague.

Yet here, the scent was higher-end and much colder, as if meant to mask a kind of "uncleanness" that went beyond mere flesh.

"Move forward. Don't look around." The guards behind him prodded Li Wei's spine with their rifle muzzles.

These guards wore dark-gray, fully-enclosed hazmat suits with gas masks over their faces, hiding their expressions.

Still, Li Wei could sense the fingers gripping their rifles trembling slightly.

Even through the thick protective suits, Li Wei's "soulless field" still caused them physical discomfort.

They crossed the empty courtyard and entered the main residence.

The floor was made of black-and-white marble, polished to a mirror-like shine.

Rows of servants in white uniforms stood on either side of the corridor, heads bowed and hands folded over their abdomens, looking like lifeless wax figures.

As Li Wei passed, the bodies of these "wax figures" shuddered slightly.

One gagged quietly, while another turned pale and stepped back a half-step.

A ripple of sheer "aversion" seemed to wash across the entire corridor.

Li Wei walked past with an expressionless face. He was already used to it.

Here, this aversion was his pass.

The doors to the parlor swung open. Li Wei was shoved inside.

This was an extremely spacious yet unusually empty room.

There were no luxurious sofas, no priceless oil paintings.

The four walls were pure white, and the only furniture was a metal desk in the center of the room, along with two chairs that looked hard and uncomfortable.

A woman sat behind the desk.

Aurelia van Atalos.

She looked younger than in her photograph, and far colder and sterner.

Her long silver hair, the color of liquid mercury, was pinned up at the nape of her neck.

She wore a tailored dark-blue military dress uniform, with a few modest medals pinned to her chest.

Right now, she wore white gloves and held a piece of cloth in her hands, meticulously cleaning a finely crafted bolt pistol.

"You're the 'messenger'?" Aurelia asked without looking up, her voice cold and clear like a scalpel sliding over glass.

"It's me." Li Wei stood in the center of the room, neither servile nor overbearing.

Aurelia finally raised her head. Her eyes were a rare, glacial blue.

When her gaze landed on Li Wei, even with her aristocratic upbringing and composure, her brow couldn't help but twitch sharply.

"Repulsive." She made no effort to hide her assessment, and with a sharp clack, she chambered a round in the bolt pistol and set it down on the desktop.

"Did Valorian expect your stench to choke me to death? Or is this some new kind of biochemical weapon of his?"

"It's a gift, lady." Li Wei took off his sunglasses, his indifferent eyes locking directly onto Aurelia's.

"In this hive city full of lies and pretense, I am the only one incapable of deceit—because my very existence is a genuine void."

Aurelia narrowed her eyes, tapping her fingers lightly against the desktop.

"You say there are roaches in my house." Her gaze grew sharp. "Give me a reason not to kill you.

If Valorian sent you to humiliate me, I'll chop you into pieces and feed you to the reclamation incinerator."

Li Wei did not answer immediately. He turned around, sweeping his gaze across the room.

Aside from Aurelia, there were four other people in the room.

Two heavily armored bodyguards stood in the corners.

An elderly butler stood behind Aurelia.

And a young maid, holding a silver tray with two steaming cups of recaf, stood about five meters away from Li Wei.

Li Wei's gaze lingered on that maid.

"You said this place was clean." Li Wei gestured vaguely at the pristine white walls around them. "Yet I smell rot. Not the stench of the sewers, but... an unnatural rot."

He took a step forward, heading toward the maid.

"Stop right there!" The guards in the corners immediately raised their weapons.

"Let him go." Aurelia spoke up abruptly.

Her glacial-blue eyes locked onto Li Wei's back, as if she wanted to see what this freak was up to.

Li Wei closed in on the maid step by step.

The maid was delicate in appearance, keeping her head lowered and looking pitiful.

Yet the moment Li Wei stepped within three meters of her, her body began to shudder uncontrollably.

It was not a tremor of fear.

It was a spasm... a seizure caused by signal interference.

For ordinary genestealer hybrids, they were never truly independent individuals.

They remained constantly connected to the "broodmind," a voice that felt like a mother's embrace, issuing commands and granting them peace.

And Li Wei was a walking signal jammer.

As Li Wei walked up to within a meter of her.

The silver tray in the maid's hands began to vibrate violently, and the coffee in the cups sloshed over the rim.

The muscles in her face began to twitch, and her once-delicate features distorted.

A low, hissing sound—one that no human throat should have been able to produce—escaped her mouth.

"Get away..." The maid jerked her head up, her eyes, originally disguised as brown, now clouded with an eerie, turbid film. "Get away! I can't see the light! I can't see the master!!"

"See?" Li Wei turned his head back, looking at Aurelia behind the desk.

"No matter how well a roach hides, the moment you sever its connection to the nest, it loses its mind."

Before the echo of his voice faded, the maid suddenly shrieked.

She flung the tray aside, drew a sharp ceramic dagger from beneath her skirt, and moved with lightning-fast speed, lunging straight for Li Wei's throat! This was hardly the speed of an ordinary maid.

"Suicide." Li Wei didn't even flinch.

Bang!

A deafening blast made Li Wei's eardrums ring.

The maid's head burst like a watermelon.

Red and white matter splattered across the pristine white wall, a shocking sight.

Li Wei even felt warm gore splash onto his face.

The dagger stopped just five centimeters from his throat, clattering to the floor alongside the headless corpse.

Aurelia remained seated behind the desk, wisps of smoke curling from the muzzle of her bolt pistol.

Her expression hadn't changed in the slightest, as though she had merely swatted a mosquito.

"Clean this up." Aurelia said coldly.

The guards outside the door rushed in, skillfully dragging away the body, while a cleaning servitor immediately rolled in to scrub away the bloodstains.

Seconds later, the room held only a heavier stench of bleach and a faint aroma of fresh blood.

Aurelia lowered her weapon and picked up the cotton cloth to clean the barrel once more.

This time, the look she gave Li Wei had changed.

Aversion remained, but it was now laced with scrutiny and a trace of deeply hidden interest.

"That was my personal maid. She'd been with me for three years." Aurelia's voice was soft. "Yet I never realized she was a... hybrid."

"Because they excel at disguise." Li Wei took out a handkerchief to wipe the blood from his cheek. "They share memories and stealth techniques through a psychic network. As long as the 'network' holds, they are flawless actors."

He walked up to the desk and laid the data-slate bearing a tiny speck of blood onto the surface.

"Yet this is about more than just a single roach, milady." "This is an entire nest."

"Governor-Regent Valorian asked me to bring this to you." Li Wei did not conceal the source; it was a strategy of radical honesty. "Inside is a list. A list explosive enough to drag your family—and perhaps the entire upper hive—straight into hell."

Aurelia didn't reach for the data-slate. She leaned back in her chair, fingers interlocked, her glacial eyes scanning Li Wei like an X-ray.

"That old fox Valorian wants to use me as his blade." Aurelia sneered. "If I use this, the Inquisition will step in, my family will be ruined, and he... he can seize everything in the chaos."

"Indeed." Li Wei nodded. "It's an open conspiracy."

"Then why deliver it?" Aurelia asked. "Are you his dog?"

"No." Li Wei shook his head. "If I were his dog, I'd be negotiating my payout with you right now, or threatening you."

Li Wei raised a single finger, pointing at the pool of blood on the floor that had yet to completely dry.

"I'm merely a passerby who wants to stay alive. Valorian threatened me with a ticket off-world, so I had no choice but to come."

"Yet he's a madman. He wants to dance with the bugs."

Li Wei leaned forward, pressing his hands against the desk and staring directly into the eyes of the aristocratic lady who held the power of life and death.

"And you, Miss Aurelia. You handle the 'cleansing'."

"You require eyes that can pierce through disguises. I require a ticket out of this wretched place."

"I don't trust Valorian. But I trust the gun in your hand."

Dead silence fell over the room. Only the ticking of the wall clock broke the quiet.

Aurelia remained silent for a long time.

At last, she reached out and picked up the data-slate.

She locked it away inside a drawer.

"You wish to serve as my 'eyes'?" Aurelia asked.

"For now." Li Wei replied.

"Very well." Aurelia stood up.

She walked right up to Li Wei, and though she stood half a head shorter than him, her presence utterly overshadowed his.

Enduring the repulsive soulless field, she reached out a gloved hand and straightened Li Wei's slightly disheveled collar.

"Valorian's ticket is a fake." Aurelia said softly, dropping a heavy bombshell.

"The starport is already locked down. Without the governor's personal signature, not even a fly leaves this place."

Li Wei's heart sank.

As expected, that old bastard had lied to him.

"Yet I can secure a real one." Aurelia looked deep into Li Wei's eyes. "Provided you help me with a task."

"What task?"

* "Tonight, my father—Governor Atalos—is hosting a family banquet." Aurelia's lips curled into a cruel smile. "Since there are roaches in the house, it's time for a thorough spring cleaning."