Escape and payment

The sewer's stench had never seemed so welcoming.

When the concrete pipes shut out the shrill alarms, the drones' buzzing, and that suffocating killing intent, Zhao Fan felt as though every bone in his body had been pulled out at once.

Splash.

He could no longer hold himself up and collapsed into the sewage. His ragged gasps echoed through the pipe, every breath accompanied by a searing pain. It was the backlash from the adrenaline wearing off, along with the weakness caused by overusing [Kinetic Repulsion].

On the system panel, the number representing his stamina had dropped to the red warning line. Red warning lights flashed frantically across his retinas, but he did not even have the strength to raise a hand.

"Alive... we're alive..."

A wheezing gasp, like the sound of bellows, came from beside him. Old Dog leaned against the moss-covered pipe wall like a puddle of sludge. Who knew where he had thrown his modified nail gun? All he had left was the backpack clutched tightly to his chest-it held the core of the Leviathan bio-armor sample they had risked their lives for, the most valuable part of the entire piece of Leviathan bio-armor.

"God or the devil, whichever bastard blessed us..." Old Dog wiped the liquid off his face, unsure whether it was sweat or sewage, and grinned, exposing a mouthful of blackened, yellow teeth. His smile looked uglier than a grimace. "We... left those people behind."

"We haven't... completely shaken them yet."

Zhao Fan struggled to sit upright. The icy sewage soaked through his clothes, clearing his head a little. He pressed his earpiece. "Ben, what's the situation?"

A burst of crackling static came through the earpiece. Only after several seconds did Fat Benjamin's worried yet excited voice come through. "Brother Zhao! You made it out! God, my heart nearly stopped back there! That crazy woman Evelyn... she activated a 'lockdown protocol.' The entire underground level of the industrial park has been flooded with knockout gas! Even Kestrel's probably having a rough time right now!"

"Erase our tracks," Zhao Fan ordered calmly, though his hands were still shaking. "Cut off every electronic signal we left behind. Erase the surveillance footage. Don't let them trace you through the network."

"Don't worry, Brother Zhao! I've already overloaded the proxy servers and made them self-destruct. All they'll find is a pile of scorched circuit boards." Pride rang in Ben's voice. "I'm planning your escape route now, avoiding the cordon aboveground. Head east, to the third maintenance hatch. It leads to an abandoned subway branch line."

"Copy."

Zhao Fan braced himself against the slippery wall and stood, his vision blackening in waves. He glanced at Old Dog. "Can you still walk?"

"As long as the money's still there, I can crawl back if I have to." Gritting his teeth, Old Dog shakily got to his feet, leaning on a steel pipe he had picked up.

The two trudged through the dark, damp, foul-smelling underground maze for a full hour.

Zhao Fan did not say a word the entire way. His mind raced through the battle again. Kestrel's ghostlike speed, that alloy short blade, and the almost overwhelming gap in their strength at the very end.

If the system had not analyzed [Kinetic Repulsion] at the last moment, if Kestrel had not underestimated him, if Evelyn's drone swarm had not thrown the situation into chaos...

Out of ten thousand possibilities, nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine ended in death.

He had survived, with his spoils.

But this was not a victory. It was merely a lucky escape.

"Power..." Zhao Fan clenched his fists. The humiliation of being pinned against a wall, his life and death out of his own hands, lodged deep in his heart like a thorn.

At last, a faint glimmer of light appeared ahead.

It was the exit from the subway branch line, leading to a secluded corner on the edge of Hell's Kitchen.

When the two emerged from underground, covered in sludge like a pair of demons fresh out of hell, the early-morning wind struck their faces. Its cold cut to the bone, but it also convinced Zhao Fan beyond any doubt-he really had survived.

Three in the morning, at the Wreckage bar.

This was usually the bar's quietest hour, but tonight the atmosphere was unusually tense. There were now four bouncers at the entrance, all wearing full tactical body armor. Clearly, the commotion at the industrial park tonight had been so great that even this lawless place had caught a scent of unease.

When Zhao Fan and Old Dog pushed open the heavy airtight door, every gaze swung toward them like a searchlight.

They looked utterly bedraggled. The mud covering them had dried onto their clothes, giving off the sewer's distinctive stench. There was still wet blood on Zhao Fan's face where flying stones had cut him. Old Dog dragged himself along one step at a time, looking as though he might fall apart at any second.

But no one dared mock them.

Because of the backpack Old Dog clutched in his hands.

In this line of work, the more bedraggled someone looked upon returning, the more dangerous the places they had visited tended to be-and the more valuable the things they brought back.

"Clear the place."

Before Zhao Fan could reach the bar, that familiar, languid voice rang out.

Shadow sat behind the bar in a black velvet qipao, smoking. The instant she saw the two of them, something flickered in her eyes. Then she waved at the bouncers.

A few minutes later, the handful of scattered patrons had been "invited" out. The heavy iron door slammed shut, cutting off all the noise outside.

Only Zhao Fan, Old Dog, Shadow, and the bald bodyguard remained in the spacious bar.

"I thought you weren't coming back."

Shadow stubbed out her cigarette, poured two glasses of hard liquor herself, and pushed them in front of the two men. Her gaze lingered on Zhao Fan for a long time, as though reassessing the young man. "Half the district heard the commotion over there tonight. Evelyn Reed even deployed heavy mechs normally reserved for wartime."

Zhao Fan did not touch the drink. He took the backpack off his back and set it heavily on the bar.

"It's here." His voice sounded tired. "Check the goods."

Shadow raised an eyebrow, reached out, and unzipped the backpack.

A faint purple glow spilled from the opening, illuminating Shadow's exquisite face. Rather than touching it directly, she put on a pair of insulated gloves and carefully lifted out an object the size of a volleyball.

It was a grayish-white piece of something resembling a shell, its surface covered in vein-like patterns. It pulsed faintly to some rhythm, giving off a little heat.

"A Leviathan bio-armor sample... and it's still active."

Shadow's breathing visibly quickened. She took out a precision scanner and swept it over the sample.

Beep-

A green light came on.

"Perfect." A breathtaking smile curled Shadow's lips. "It's only a small piece of the core region, but its activity has been preserved better than I expected. Even the samples in military industrial laboratories probably aren't this fresh."

She raised her head. At last, there was a trace of appreciation in her eyes as she looked at Zhao Fan, and even a hint of wariness.

"What about Kestrel?" she suddenly asked. "I heard he went too."

"I won," Zhao Fan replied flatly, without offering another word of explanation.

But those two words carried more weight than any boast. Beside him, Old Dog took a great gulp of liquor and chuckled foolishly, as though he had been the one to drive Kestrel back.

Shadow gave Zhao Fan a long look and did not press for details. She knew the rules, and she knew everyone had secrets. Zhao Fan had snatched a prize from Kestrel's grasp. Whatever means he had used, that proved he was no longer the newcomer who needed Old Dog to show him the way.

"Fifty thousand dollars." Shadow snapped her fingers.

The bald bodyguard lifted a black briefcase from beneath the bar, opened it, and turned it toward Zhao Fan.

Inside were neatly arranged bundles of used bills. The distinctive ink smell of American dollars instantly diluted the rotten stench clinging to Zhao Fan.

"That's the agreed price," Shadow said. "And as a reward for your outstanding performance, I'm adding another fifty thousand. In this business, we call it 'life-risk money' and 'hush money.'"

A hundred thousand dollars.

Old Dog stared. He had never seen so much cash piled together in his entire life. He reached out to touch it, then drew his hand back as though afraid it would burn him.

Zhao Fan looked at the money.

Only a few hours ago, he had been worrying over a few hundred dollars in rent. Now, this sum was enough for him to buy a fairly decent secondhand apartment in Queens, or live comfortably for several years.

But he felt none of the wild joy he had expected.

The fear, pain, exhaustion, and the desire for power that had erupted in that final moment had raised his threshold far too high along the way. At this moment, money seemed merely a number, a resource, rather than the destination.

"I want to exchange it for equipment," Zhao Fan suddenly said.

Old Dog froze. "Zhao, have you gone crazy? This is money! Cold, hard cash!"

Shadow was a little surprised too. "Oh? You're not planning to take this money and enjoy yourself for a while? Or simply wash your hands of the whole business?"

"Wash my hands?" Zhao Fan gave a cold laugh, the laugh of someone who had seen through everything after facing life and death. "Once your hands are dirty, you can never wash them clean again. Evelyn has her sights on me, and Kestrel will remember me too. If I don't get stronger, not only will I never live to spend this money, it'll become my death warrant."

He took twenty thousand dollars from the case and pushed ten thousand of it toward Old Dog.

"Jose, this is your share. Get your leg treated, or find somewhere to lie low for a while."

Old Dog looked at Zhao Fan, his lips trembling a few times, but in the end said nothing. He silently put the money away, patted Zhao Fan's shoulder with a complicated look in his eyes, then limped out of the bar.

He knew that, starting tonight, he and this young man might belong to two different worlds.

Zhao Fan belonged to higher, more dangerous skies, while he belonged only to the sewers. For him to have managed this much in the United States was already beyond reproach.

After Old Dog left, Zhao Fan pushed the remaining eighty thousand dollars back toward Shadow.

"I want higher-grade equipment, or drugs that can improve my physical attributes. And information about superpowers."

Shadow's pupils contracted slightly. She understood Zhao Fan's hint.

"Smart man. It seems you found more than a sample down there. You found something... interesting, too." The smile on Shadow's lips deepened. "Deal. But good merchandise takes time to source. Come back in three days to collect it. I'll hold this money for you in the meantime."

She pulled a few stacks of bills from the briefcase, about five thousand dollars, and tossed them to Zhao Fan.

"Take this pocket money."

Zhao Fan caught the money and tucked it into his pocket.

"A pleasure doing business."

He turned and left. Though his departing figure was thin, to Shadow's eyes, an invisible gloom seemed to hang over it.

"Boss," the bald bodyguard asked quietly, watching Zhao Fan leave, "there's something strange about this kid. Kestrel couldn't have failed, unless..."

"Unless he has a secret we don't know about." Shadow lit another cigarette, her slender fingers gently stroking the pulsing biological sample. "A dangerous, captivating variable outside our plans. Keep an eye on him."