Somewhere in NYC

  Yan Qing wandered the streets without direction. Evening had fallen, but in New York, night was when life truly began.

  Teenagers clustered on street corners. Office workers spilled out of bars. Women lingered beneath neon lights, waiting.

  Reality.

  And yet Yan Qing felt as though he hadn’t lived in it for a very long time.

  Not since Genesis.

  Those ‘people’—from another world—had come back with him.

  And that person.

  Chen’s gaze lingered on him in a way that unsettled him—too deep, too heavy, filled with an unfamiliar tenderness and a nostalgia that had no clear source, as though they had known each other far longer than they had.

  So intense it almost made Yan Qing feel as though he had forgotten something vital.

  At first, he had tried to dismiss it. To tell himself he was imagining things.

  But today—

  “Why do you look at me like that…?”

  Yan Qing stopped, leaning unconsciously against a utility pole.

  Everything Chen did seemed to carry a subtext, drawing his thoughts toward places they had no business going.

  It was absurd.

  Impossible.

  He shook his head hard, as if he could dislodge the idea by force.

  Then—

  Pain exploded at the back of his neck.

  His legs gave way.

  As darkness closed in, the last thing Yan Qing saw was a pair of golden eyes—deep enough to swallow souls.

  Chen…

  What do you want from me?

  Thirty minutes later — Yan Qing’s apartment

  Chen glanced at the clock, lips tightening.

  Too long.

  New York’s public safety record was far from stellar—something even a newcomer could learn from the constant news reports.

  Please be all right…

  As the minute hand ticked forward, Chen rose from the sofa.

  Just as he prepared to leap from the balcony, the old landline rang.

  He froze.

  He did nothing.

  He did not exist here. Answering could expose him.

  After several insistent rings, the call rolled into voicemail.

  Beep.

  [I know you’re there. Listen carefully. Yan Qing is with us. Come to the cornfields thirty kilometers outside the city if you want to see your precious roommate alive again.]

  Click.

  Silence returned.

  Chen’s hands clenched, then slowly relaxed.

  Silver claws glinted in the low light.

  “Xiao,” he said coolly to the empty air, “locate Yan Qing’s coordinates.”

  [Thirty kilometers northwest of your position.]

  The reply came from nowhere, edged with electronic distortion.

  Chen’s golden eyes dropped to absolute zero, glowing faintly in the darkness.

  “…Yan Qing.”

  Evening, NYC xx Hospital

  Yan Qing…

  Chen?

  So tired…

  He tried to turn, but something held him in place. His body would not obey.

  NYC xx Hospital

  Yan Qing surfaced slowly, the world heavy and blurred at the edges.

  His body wouldn’t respond at first.

  “Yan Qing.”

  A familiar voice cut through the fog.

  “Yan Qing!”

  He jerked awake and found Lanice leaning over him, bronze-toned face tight with focus.

  “Lanice?” Yan Qing pushed himself upright. “Hospital?”

  “Yes.” Lanice steadied him automatically. “You were unconscious when we found you.”

  “We…?” Yan Qing echoed.

  “Aiden, Sam, and I.” Lanice’s tone was calm, measured. “We were on our way to your apartment.”

  Yan Qing frowned. “Why?”

  Lanice didn’t answer right away.

  He had always been the kind of person who noticed things others passed over—how long someone lingered, where their attention drifted, the way a crowd shifted when it shouldn’t.

  “It started with people,” Lanice said at last. “Strangers. Ordinary-looking. Too ordinary.”

  Yan Qing went still.

  “They weren’t doing anything illegal,” Lanice continued. “No tailing. No contact. Just… positioning. Standing where they didn’t need to be. Reappearing when they shouldn’t have.”

  Aiden leaned against the wall, arms crossed. “Lanice said it felt wrong.”

  “It did,” Lanice said. “Same behavior. Different faces. Always near the same people.”

  Sam added quietly, “The Genesis survivors.”

  Yan Qing’s breath caught.

  “I didn’t have proof,” Lanice said. “Just pattern recognition. The kind you learn to trust in the field.”

  “So we talked it through,” Aiden said. “And decided not to use phones.”

  Sam nodded. “If someone was watching you, there was a good chance your phone was compromised too.”

  “That’s why we came in person,” Lanice finished. “To warn you.”

  Yan Qing swallowed.

  “We were a block from your building,” Lanice went on, voice tightening, “when we saw you on the ground.”

  The memory slammed back—

  The street.The sudden pain at the back of his neck.The darkness.

  “I was attacked,” Yan Qing said hoarsely. His hand rose to his neck. “Someone knocked me out.”

  Lanice’s gaze sharpened. “Did you see them?”

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  “No.”

  “Clean hit,” Lanice said. “Whoever it was knew what they were doing.”

  Yan Qing’s hand slid to his wrist—

  —and stopped.

  The bracelet was gone.

  “Lanice,” he said slowly, “do you know where my bracelet is? The grey one.”

  Lanice frowned. “You didn’t have one when we found you. Just your keys.”

  Yan Qing stared at his bare wrist.

  He hadn’t taken it off.

  Not once.

  It had been light enough to forget. Warm in a way body heat couldn’t explain. He had thought about removing it—

  —but the thought had always slipped away.

  Yan Qing’s dark eyes widened as something in his mind clicked.

  “That bracelet was important,” Yan Qing said, his voice tight with realization.

  A surge of alarm crossed his face. “I have to go home. Now.” He swung his legs over the side of the hospital bed, intent on leaving.

  Aiden stepped forward, intercepting him. “Hold on, Professor. You’re still hooked up to the monitors.”

  Yan Qing shook his head, urgency sharpening his tone. “No, Aiden. I need to go home immediately. He’s in danger.” His dark eyes, wide with anxiety, met Aiden’s.

  The three soldiers exchanged uncertain glances, unsettled by the scientist’s sudden insistence.

  Lanice broke the silence, his voice measured. “Is this connected to why you were attacked?”

  Yan Qing nodded, his reply low and tense. “I can’t explain here.” He glanced around the bustling emergency ward, wary of the constant flow of people.

  Lanice seemed to understand the gravity beneath Yan Qing’s words. He gave a decisive nod. “All right. We’ll take you home.”

  New York City — Residential District

  "I need to tell you something. Please don’t panic,” Yan Qing said, the key poised in the lock.

  Lanice, Aiden, and Sam had come to his home together. Their faces were tight with leftover worry.

  “What is it?” Aiden asked, trying for humor. “Don’t tell me you’ve got something illegal stashed in there.”

  Yan Qing’s smile was rigid.

  Lanice studied him. “Don’t tell me you actually do.”

  “…Do you remember the commander?” Yan Qing said quietly.

  Aiden and Sam’s mouths fell open.

  “You didn’t—” Sam began.

  Yan Qing opened the door.

  The apartment came into view.

  Someone was standing inside.

  A Teleopean.

  But not the one Yan Qing knew.

  “Who are you?” Yan Qing asked, dread rising in his throat like bile.

  Sam glanced between the stranger and Yan Qing, baffled. “I thought you knew him.”

  “I don’t,” Yan Qing said, eyes locked on the intruder.

  The Teleopean straightened. His face was blank, voice precise.

  “I am Xiao.Tian.Xiao, High Armed Administrative Officer of Teleopea.” He paused, as if reciting a legal statement. “Five ring-hours ago, we received an emergency signal from the Star Emperor. Contact has been severed since. I require an explanation. If none is provided, Teleopea will initiate armed action against Earth in four ring-hours.”

  “Star Emperor?” Lanice repeated, brow furrowing.

  “The commander Chen.Xing.Chen,” Xiao said. “We are a monarchic system. Chen is our highest authority. Harm to him is an act of provocation against our entire species.”

  Yan Qing’s pulse spiked.

  Chen never mentioned any of this. Not once.

  Lanice’s face tightened. “Please tell me you know where he is, Yan Qing.”

  “When I arrived, Chen was already gone,” Xiao said. “But your communication device contained a message.”

  He lifted a telephone receiver and pressed playback.

  “I know you’re there. Listen. Yan Qing is in our hands. Come to the cornfields thirty kilometers outside the city, or you’ll never see your precious roommate again.”

  The apartment went dead silent.

  Yan Qing’s mouth went dry.

  The attack on George Street. The missing bracelet. This message.

  Too clean. Too connected.

  “The people who attacked me—” Yan Qing said, voice rough, “—they’re watching us. They’ve been watching us this whole time, and I didn’t know.”

  “Chen won’t be that stupid,” Yan Qing insisted, half to Xiao, half to himself. “He won’t go. He—”

  “In this scenario,” Xiao cut in, voice flat as ice, “I am one hundred percent certain he already did.”

  Sam blurted, “Come on. I get scam calls like that four times a day. It’s obviously—”

  Lanice clapped a hand over Sam’s mouth and forced a laugh toward Xiao. “He means… Chen probably just stepped out for a moment.”

  Xiao’s pale-gold eyes flicked to them.

  “Impossible,” he said. “We do not remain calm when our chosen partner is threatened.”

  Aiden and Sam stared like their brains had shorted out.

  Yan Qing didn’t look surprised.

  He already knew what Chen wanted.

  He just refused to say it out loud—because once he did, everything he’d lived by for twenty years—every rule, every moral certainty—would crack.

  Xiao studied them, then turned to Yan Qing, expression still unreadable.

  “Don’t tell me,” he said with faint irritation, “he hasn’t said anything yet.”

  Aiden clutched his chest. “I can’t—my heart can’t handle this. This is insane.”

  Yan Qing swallowed, throat tight.

  “This isn’t right,” he said hoarsely. “How can he—when I—”

  Xiao’s face finally shifted into something like exasperation.

  “Your universe is still this conservative?” he muttered.

  Aiden and Sam exchanged a look that screamed: No—the universe you came from is just ridiculous.

  Xiao’s voice returned to its prior severity.

  “In summary: if I cannot find my superior in four ring-hours, our fleet will apply pressure to Earth. It will become… ugly.”

  Yan Qing exhaled a raw, frustrated sound and covered his face.

  “I’ll find him,” he said through his fingers. “This is my responsibility.”

  Xiao looked at him for a long moment.

  From a Teleopean perspective, Yan Qing was fragile. Soft. Unfit for a warrior’s interest.

  And yet Chen’s once-in-a-lifetime bond had landed on this human.

  The only word Xiao could summon in Earth-language was: miracle.

  “Then we begin searching for Chen,” Xiao said simply.

  Complex — Unknown Location

  The air was saturated with something wrong: the metallic tang of rust mixed with the sterile bite of disinfectant, thick enough to feel like it coated the throat. The laboratory lay in half-light. Cold-toned fixtures washed the metal walls in a pallid sheen, turning every surface into something clinical and hostile. Above, a ceiling-mounted camera rotated in silence. Its red indicator blinked like a watchful eye, collecting every corner, every angle.

  Hiss—whum—

  A heavy door began to open.

  A tall figure stepped out of the dark.

  Chen wore a long black robe. His golden braid fell down his back, swaying with the measured rhythm of his gait. In the dim light, his irises caught and returned the glow—predatory, lucid, unblinking.

  At the far end of the lab stood a thick wall of black, one-way glass. On the other side, nine fully armed soldiers held position, weapons lifted—twenty-first-century automatic firepower aimed with rehearsed certainty. Among them stood a scientist in a white coat, the corners of his mouth curved into a knowing, deliberate smile, as if the entire tableau had been staged for this moment.

  Chen stopped.

  His gaze swept the room.

  In the four corners, unmanned weapons platforms activated without sound. Barrels pivoted toward him. Metal caught the light and gave it back in sharp, indifferent flashes.

  “Where is he?” Chen’s voice was cold, amplified by the empty volume of the space. “And how are you using our locator system?”

  His gold eyes fixed on the people behind the glass, as though the glass did not exist—as though nothing placed between them could.

  Behind the reinforced barrier, soldiers and scientists felt an irrational unease seep into their bones. Their position was supposed to be safe. The compartment was supposed to hold. Yet the human-shaped organism standing alone in the containment room dragged the air down into something suffocating. Fingers tightened on triggers. Sweat gathered at temples.

  “Deploy the neural suppressant,” the scientist said softly.

  Vents along the walls exhaled a colorless, odorless gas. It spread quickly, pooling into the laboratory with practiced efficiency. Humanity’s newest neuro-inhibitory weapon—broad-spectrum, devastating, designed to drop any known lifeform. They believed this foreign entity would not be an exception.

  Chen stood still.

  His pupils did not flicker. He did not appear to breathe. His gaze passed through the glass. For the briefest moment, his lashes trembled—an almost imperceptible concession to time.

  Then his body swayed.

  He fell.

  His robe flared against the metal floor. His golden eyes slid shut, as if consciousness had simply been cut.

  “It worked,” one of the soldiers murmured, unable to keep triumph from his voice.

  The scientist lifted a hand. Two technicians in protective gear entered at once. One carried a diagnostic device and approached with ritual caution, kneeling by Chen’s motionless body to check vital signs.

  The moment a gloved finger touched him—

  —shhk.

  Chen’s eyes snapped open.

  Gold vanished, swallowed instantly by a depth of black that looked less like pupils and more like a void. His mouth curved.

  He caught the technician’s wrist—fast, precise—and tightened his grip by a fraction.

  Crack.

  Bone broke with a wet, obscene clarity. The technician screamed and collapsed, the device clattering uselessly across the floor.

  Chen rose.

  Slowly, calmly—yet the pressure of him filled the room like gravity.

  His gaze traveled over the laboratory, as if counting prey.

  And in that brief contact, through direct neural interface, memory fragments flooded him—images, protocols, voices, plans.

  Yan Qing was not here.

  A cold amusement surfaced at the edge of Chen’s mouth.

  “You’re bold,” he said, anger sharpening the syllables.

  He turned, walking back toward the door he had entered through.

  Behind the glass, the scientist’s smile evaporated. A military officer snatched up a communicator.

  “Kill him.”

  The order had been to capture him alive. But that was no longer plausible. The officer had seen what Subject 9 could do. If the gas could not subdue this alien, then there would be no experiment conducted while he drew breath.

  Dead would have to be acceptable.

  Hidden panels slid open. Dozens of soldiers poured into the lab. The automated platforms engaged fully. Heavy 12.7-millimeter fire erupted, muzzle flashes strobing the space, rounds hammering toward Chen like a metal storm.

  Bang—bang—bang—

  And then—

  Chen vanished.

  “He—where the hell did he go?!” a soldier shouted, terror breaking through discipline.

  The answer came as a blade.

  A tail—armored, edged—whipped out of smoke with surgical speed, puncturing straight through a man’s chest and lifting him off the floor. Blood sprayed in an arc across steel.

  Chen reappeared as his stealth field fully disengaged.

  Wings unfurled with a violent snap, throwing air hard enough to stagger nearby men. His eyes burned with something inhuman. His tail swept laterally, knocking weapons from hands as if they were toys.

  “RPGs!” the officer screamed.

  Two soldiers raised anti-tank launchers and fired.

  BOOM—

  Fire swallowed Chen’s position. Shockwaves shuddered through the structure. The air filled with smoke and scorched metal.

  In the control room, the scientist’s hands trembled.

  “Is it—did we—” he stammered.

  A silhouette walked out of the smoke.

  Chen was intact.

  Not a scorch mark, not a stagger.

  He lifted his head and stared through the glass—directly at them—and raised one hand. His fingers moved a hair’s breadth.

  The air warped.

  Pressure rolled outward, invisible and absolute. His eyes turned fully black again, and his presence sharpened into something like a drawn blade.

  Crack.

  The one-way glass began to fracture. Spiderweb lines raced across it in an instant—

  then the wall exploded outward.

  Shattering—

  Armored, bullet-resistant glass became a storm of razor shards. People screamed, stumbling backward. Some fell. Faces went white.

  “Monster!”

  Chen crossed the distance like a glitch in reality. He appeared in front of the lead scientist and seized his throat, lifting him with one hand as if the man weighed nothing.

  “You should bring more,” Chen said, voice cold enough to numb.

  He whipped his arm and hurled the scientist into a metal wall. The body struck and dropped with a heavy, final sound.

  The laboratory lay in ruin: debris, bodies, pooling blood. Survivors huddled in corners, staring at him with blank terror, as if their minds could not process what they had witnessed.

  Chen did not look at them again.

  He turned and left.

  His figure vanished down the dark corridor, leaving behind only silence and the metallic stink of slaughter.

  In a hidden control room elsewhere, an old man watched the monitors dissolve into static. A thin smile crept across his face.

  “So pure-bloods really are worse than we imagined,” he murmured, eyes bright with hunger.

  He turned to his assistant.

  “Continue. Release Subject 9. This is only the beginning.”