Infiltration
On the third-to-last day of the month, Shen Mo's messenger bird landed on a pine branch outside the stone house.
When Long Tian drew the paper scroll from the slender tube on the bird's leg, his fingertips found it slightly damp, as though it had been soaked by morning dew on the bird's feathers and then dried again. He unfolded it, scanned it, and set it on the stone ledge beside the stove for Yu Jin to read. The message was brief, but every word carried weight: "The first batch of live subjects departed the northern outskirts transfer station this morning. They are expected to arrive beneath the camp tomorrow night. The processing area has been cleared and is ready. The window is limited to these two days. Miss it, and there will be no waiting."
After reading it, Yu Jin tossed the scroll into the stove. Flames curled around the paper and burned it into curled flakes of ash, which drifted on the hot currents for a few breaths before settling. The two crouched by the stove in silence for a while. Long Tian turned the gray metal ring on his left ring finger, then stood and began gathering what he needed: rope, a short blade, a fire starter, insect-repellent powder, a waterskin, and dry rations. He wrapped them tightly in a bundle and tied it to his back. Yu Jin retied the straps of his own old cloth bundle, secured his stone pendant, and felt the outline of the pottery shard tucked against his chest.
At dusk, the two left the stone house and took a hunter's trail down the mountain as a shortcut. They walked through the night and reached the outer reaches of Spirit City's northwestern outskirts during the darkest hours before dawn. The meeting point Mu Shuang had arranged was behind an abandoned brick kiln at the city's northwest corner. It was still dark when they arrived, and the kiln's black silhouette loomed through the morning mist like a collapsed burial mound. Long Tian went around to the back of the kiln and found Mu Shuang among a heap of broken bricks and rubble. Wrapped in a gray cloak, she crouched in a corner like a stone grown out of the ruins. When she saw Long Tian, she merely lifted her chin in greeting.
Mu Shuang said little. She stood and led them through a disused drainage ditch on the outskirts, then slipped through a gap in a rusty iron fence into a passage outside the city defenses. High walls rose on either side, leaving only a thin strip of gray sky overhead, and the dirt underfoot was mixed with broken bricks and roof tiles. After about half an hour, they came to an iron ladder set into the wall ahead, rising to a maintenance hatch. Mu Shuang climbed up first and stopped at the hatch's outer edge. She listened for a moment, then signaled to the others below.
Long Tian climbed after her, with Yu Jin bringing up the rear. The three slipped silently through the hatch into a narrow maintenance corridor. The light was dim, and the air was thick with the mingled smell of old rust and machine oil. Mu Shuang led the way and stopped after two turns, pointing to an iron door in the side of the corridor. Its surface was so rusted that its original color was impossible to make out, but a bright mark along the edge of the doorframe showed where it had been rubbed repeatedly.
"The entrance to the air vent is behind the door," Mu Shuang said in a low voice. "Past it is the equipment floor of the camp's main building. Go north along the passage for about thirty paces, and there's a maintenance cover on the right that can be unscrewed. Behind it is the entrance to a ventilation duct leading underground. Don't speak from here on. Use this."
She handed one of three small gray pills to each of them. Long Tian sniffed his as he took it. It smelled faintly bitter, with a mingled scent of herbs and old dust. Yu Jin had already followed Mu Shuang's example and put the pill in his mouth without swallowing it. Mu Shuang nodded to them, silently pulled the iron door open a crack, and squeezed through sideways.
Long Tian followed. The pill began to dissolve in his mouth, and a cool aftertaste spread down his throat, making his breathing softer and shallower, until the air passing in and out of his nose was almost inaudible. A thin layer of dust cushioned their footsteps on the equipment floor's concrete, leaving them nearly soundless. Keeping close to the wall, Long Tian followed Mu Shuang and counted thirty paces. Sure enough, he felt an iron maintenance cover to his right. The bolts around its edge had already been loosened, and he twisted them out by hand.
Behind the cover was a square duct sloping downward. Thick dust covered all four walls, and it was just wide enough for one person to pass through sideways. Mu Shuang crawled in first, followed by Long Tian, with Yu Jin last. The slope grew steeper, then leveled out after about two zhang, narrowing slightly. Every few paces, a row of sensing wires ran along the duct wall, mostly covered in dust. When Long Tian's left hand, with its metal ring, brushed one of the wires, the runes on the ring flashed for an instant and suppressed that trace of Soul Power detection.
After nearly a hundred paces through the level duct, they came to a bend. Mu Shuang stopped there and gestured that they had arrived. She felt inside a hidden groove in the duct wall and drew out an extremely fine iron wire, then reached it around the bend and lightly scratched the wall on the far side twice. There was no response. She withdrew the wire and listened for a moment, then turned and held up three fingers to Long Tian: the processing area was outside, and no one was guarding it at present.
Long Tian squeezed sideways around the bend, gripped the edge of the duct's exit, and stuck his head out for a look. Beyond it was a stone chamber roughly two zhang square, with a low ceiling, bare walls, and a floor laid with coarse concrete. A row of barred iron doors was set into one wall, each opening onto a small, empty cage. Against the opposite wall stood a simple wooden table and a chair. A logbook lay open on the table, its ink still wet-someone had left only recently.
Long Tian slipped soundlessly from the vent onto the stone chamber floor, followed by Yu Jin and Mu Shuang. Keeping close to the wall, the three moved to the row of barred doors and inspected them. There were seven cages, all empty, with freshly laid bits of dry straw left on the floors. Mu Shuang bent down, picked up a piece of straw, examined its broken end, and held it to her nose. "The straw was laid today," she whispered. "The people haven't arrived yet."
Just then, footsteps sounded beyond the iron door at the chamber's entrance. Heavy, regular, and belonging to more than one person. Mu Shuang quickly signaled for them to hide. The three retreated into the shadows beneath the vent and crouched down, each concealing their presence. The hinges gave a rusty creak as the iron door was pushed open, and two figures entered. The one in front wore the Iron Guard's standard gray coat and carried a ring of keys; behind him was a prisoner, tall and thin, with his hands tied behind his back and a coarse cloth sack over his head.
Long Tian's heart clenched when his gaze fell on the man's figure. Though the man was taller than he remembered, the breadth of his shoulders and back and the slight stoop in his walk brought a powerful, impossible thought to mind. The gray-coated escort pushed the tall, thin man into the innermost cage and locked the barred door. He tore a page from the logbook, wrote a few words on it, and left it on the table before turning to go. The iron door closed behind him, his footsteps faded, and silence returned to the stone chamber.
Long Tian emerged from the shadows and strode to the cage. He crouched outside the thick iron bars and slowly reached through to remove the cloth sack from the man's head.
Beneath the sack was a square face with thick brows. A few more white hairs had appeared at his temples since they last parted, and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes had deepened. But Long Tian had known the shape of those eyes for all eleven years of his life-solid and steadfast, like the surface of an old well.
Long Tieshan sat amid the straw in the cage and raised his head, meeting Long Tian's gaze through the iron bars. His lips moved slightly, making no sound, but Long Tian read the words: "Don't rush."
Long Tian crouched outside the bars when the spot where the token on his chest touched his skin suddenly burned. His hand tightened around an iron bar, and a gray-white glow involuntarily lit his palm.
Mu Shuang stepped out of the shadows and stood behind him. Her gaze passed over the face of the man in the cage without surprise. She merely moved the vent cover aside without a sound, widening the opening. Yu Jin crouched a few paces away, watching. The golden-black embers deep in his eyes flickered slightly, like a lamplight stirred by the wind.
The stone chamber was utterly quiet. Now and then, the footsteps of a distant patrol sounded beyond the iron door. They paused briefly upon reaching the doorway, then continued away, as though the patrol had confirmed that all was normal and moved on without coming in to check.
Long Tian crouched there motionless, the gray-white light in his palm casting the dark outlines of the iron bars into sharp relief. Inside the cage, Long Tieshan looked up at him. There was something deep and steady in his gaze, like a hand that had held on for years without letting go, finally finding another hand to take over.