The night air still burned in Lian’s lungs when they reached the edge of the pier. Sirens blared somewhere behind them, and the thick smell of fuel clung to their clothes. Her hands trembled as she dragged Kai down a narrow alley behind a shuttered seafood stall. He stumbled, half-conscious, blood seeping through his sleeve.

  “Sit,” she said, her voice low but sharp. She pressed him against the wall and crouched in front of him, scanning the street. The sound of waves slapped against the dock’s pylons, steady and cold. It was the only thing that wasn’t spinning out of control.

  Kai tried to speak. His lips moved but no sound came out. She grabbed his chin gently, forcing him to look at her. “Don’t talk,” she said. “You’re fine. It’s just a graze.”

  It wasn’t just a graze. The bullet had cut deep along his arm, grazing muscle. She could see the tremor in his fingers. He was losing blood too fast. She ripped open her own sleeve and wrapped it around his arm, pulling it tight. He winced, but his breathing started to even out.

  “Stay awake,” she said.

  He nodded weakly. “You always say that,” he muttered.

  “Because you never listen.”

  Lian leaned against the wall beside him. The concrete was still warm from the explosion that had torn through the shipping yard minutes earlier. It had been too clean to be an accident. Someone knew exactly where they’d be and when. The precision burned in her mind like a wound she couldn’t reach.

  Kai’s head fell against the wall. His eyes were glassy. “They knew,” he said quietly. “They were waiting for us.”

  Lian didn’t answer. She looked down the alley again. A delivery truck rolled by in the distance, tires hissing on wet pavement. Beyond that, the night was empty. The chaos had stayed behind them, swallowed by smoke and panic. For now, they were ghosts again.

  She helped Kai to his feet. “Come on. We can’t stay here.”

  They moved through the maze of alleys behind the dockside markets. They reached a side street where an old man was hosing down the sidewalk outside his noodle shop. He barely looked at them, just nodded once before turning back to his work. Hong Kong never asked questions it didn’t want the answers to.

  Lian guided Kai around the corner to a stairwell that led to the back of the shop. She knocked three times, paused, then twice more. A metal latch clicked, and a small door opened. The smell of incense drifted out.

  The woman inside was small, gray-haired, with eyes that had seen too much. “You’re late,” she said simply.

  Lian bowed her head. “We were delayed.”

  The woman looked at Kai. “He needs stitches.”

  “Can you handle it?”

  She nodded once. “Get inside.”

  They entered a cramped room behind the shop, lit only by a single bulb. The walls were lined with shelves of herbs and jars, the air thick with camphor and old smoke. The woman gestured for Kai to sit on a low stool. She pulled out a metal tray, her movements calm and practiced.

  Lian leaned against the wall, finally allowing herself to breathe. The adrenaline still buzzed under her skin. Her hands were streaked with dried blood — his, not hers. Her mind replayed the ambush again and again: the way the shooters had appeared from nowhere, the precision of their movements, the cold efficiency of trained men. LSK’s reach was growing faster than she expected.

  Kai groaned softly as the woman worked. Lian turned away, focusing on the shelves instead. Old apothecary jars lined them, each one carefully labeled. She had come here once as a teenager, after a job had gone wrong in Sham Shui Po. The same woman had stitched her up back then too. She had been younger then, still believing that revenge would one day feel like peace.

  The woman tied the last knot and stepped back. “He’ll live,” she said, wiping her hands. “Keep it clean. But no more running or fighting.”

  Lian nodded. “Thank you.”

  The woman looked at her. “You’re bringing too much noise lately.”

  Lian said nothing. The woman sighed. “You used to be careful.”

  Lian met her eyes. “We still are.”

  The woman didn’t argue. She just turned away and started tidying up her table. “There’s a room upstairs. You can rest till morning.”

  Lian helped Kai to his feet again. His skin was pale but his breathing had steadied. They climbed the narrow stairs to a small room under the roof. It smelled faintly of soy and dust. A single futon sat against the wall.

  Lian eased Kai onto it and sat beside him.

  For a while, neither spoke. The sounds of the city below filtered in.

  Lian stared at the small window where the faintest trace of dawn was beginning to seep through.

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  Kai stirred. “You think they tracked us?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Lian,” he pressed. “It wasn’t random.”

  “I know,” she said quietly. “It never is.”

  He looked at her, exhaustion shadowing his face. “You think it was LSK?”

  Her silence told him everything.

  He turned his face away. “I thought we covered our traces.”

  “We did.” Lian rubbed her temples. “Someone gave them our location. Someone who knew about the shipment.”

  Kai exhaled, slow and shaky. “You think Mei?”

  Lian frowned. “No. She wouldn’t.”

  “You sure?” His voice was low.

  Lian’s jaw tightened. “She’s not one of them.”

  He didn’t push further. He just stared at the ceiling, lost in the same storm that churned in her own chest. Mei had risked her life for them more than once. But trust was a fragile thing, especially in their world. Lian hated herself for even hesitating.

  After a long silence, she stood. “Rest. I’ll watch the street.”

  Kai’s eyes were already half-closed. “You should sleep too.”

  She shook her head. “Later.”

  He was asleep before she could argue. His breathing deepened, steady and calm. She watched him for a moment, her expression unreadable. The last of the adrenaline had drained away, leaving only the ache of fatigue and anger.

  Lian crossed to the window. The city outside was still dark, though a faint gray hinted at the coming dawn.

  She thought of the men who had attacked them. They wanted her alive, or they wouldn’t have used containment rounds.

  That meant they were getting closer to something. Something she hadn’t seen yet.

  A floorboard creaked behind her. She turned, hand instinctively going to her knife, but it was only the old woman.

  “You shouldn’t stand there,” the woman said softly. “You’ll only draw attention.”

  Lian stepped back from the window. “Sorry, just my old habits kicking in.”

  The woman studied her. “You’ve been running too long.”

  Lian’s voice was calm. “It’s what I’m good at.”

  The woman smiled faintly. “No one is good at running forever.”

  Lian didn’t respond. The woman placed a small bowl of broth on the table beside Kai. “When he wakes, make him drink.”

  “Thank you.”

  The woman hesitated at the door. “There’s talk in the markets of foreigners buying names and asking about a pair of siblings. You should move soon.”

  Lian’s hand curled into a fist. “Who?”

  The woman shook her head. “No one knows. But I know they pay well.”

  Lian nodded slowly. “We’ll be gone by dawn.”

  When the woman left, the silence settled heavy again. Lian sat on the edge of the futon and watched Kai sleep. He still looked like the boy she’d dragged out of that burning house years ago. The one who had clung to her hand when the world ended.

  She brushed his hair away from his forehead. “You did good,” she whispered.

  Outside, the city began to wake.

  But when Lian finally closed her eyes, sleep didn’t come easily. Her mind kept looping back to the docks. Someone had planned every second. Someone who knew their patterns, their safe routes, their fallback points.

  She had to find out who.

  By the time the sun had fully risen, she was already on her feet again. Kai was still asleep, his bandaged arm resting on his chest. She slipped out quietly, down the narrow stairs, and into the back alley.

  She reached the burned edge of the dockyard by mid-morning. Police had cordoned off the area, but she stayed in the shadows, watching. The charred remains of shipping containers were stacked like tombstones. Firefighters sprayed down the last of the embers. Reporters gathered at the fence, hungry for statements they’d never get.

  She slipped through a side path that led behind the warehouses. The smell of smoke was sharp, acrid. Her boots left prints in the wet soot. She crouched where she remembered their van had been. Only a few melted fragments of metal remained. Someone had already cleaned up the bodies.

  She found what she was looking for near the fence — a small, twisted piece of metal half-buried in the ash. She picked it up, wiping away the soot. It wasn’t part of the explosion. It was a drone fragment — a reconnaissance unit, military-grade, short-range. LSK tech.

  Her pulse quickened. They hadn’t just known where she was. They’d been watching.

  She slipped the fragment into her pocket and left before anyone saw her. By the time she returned to the safehouse, Kai was awake, sipping broth and staring at the ceiling.

  “You went back,” he said when she entered.

  She tossed him a small data chip. “Found this near the docks. Drone telemetry.”

  He caught it clumsily with his good hand. “You’re insane.”

  “Probably,” she said, sitting down across from him. “Can you pull anything off it?”

  He stared at it for a moment, then nodded. “Give me an hour.”

  He set up his laptop, one-handed, while she cleaned her weapons.

  After a while, Kai spoke. “There’s encrypted data here. Serial number traces to an LSK sub-unit. They’ve been running surveillance across Kowloon for weeks.”

  Lian looked up. “On us?”

  “On everyone. But their focus zones align with our last three jobs.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “They’re mapping our pattern.”

  He nodded. “They’re anticipating us.”

  She exhaled slowly. “Then we change it.”

  Kai looked at her. “You already have something in mind.”

  “Not yet,” she said. “But I will.”

  They sat in silence for a while. Outside, the day grew hotter, the city louder. Lian watched Kai’s reflection in the window. He looked older now, more tired. The mission was eating both of them alive in pieces too small to notice.

  She stood, stretching her shoulders. “Get some rest. We move tonight.”

  “Where?”

  “North Point,” she said. “Someone there’s been selling names to outsiders.”

  He smiled faintly. “You’re not going to ask questions first, are you?”

  “Not if I already know the answers.”

  She stepped out onto the landing, the air heavy with the smell of soy and sea breeze. Below, the noodle shop clattered with lunch orders, the hum of life masking everything beneath. She took one last look at the city that had become both their battlefield and their cage.

  It was another day in Hong Kong, another hunt beginning. And somewhere out there, the people who thought they could smoke them out were already making their next move.

  Lian smiled without humor. Let them try.