Wu Haoyu's POV
The truck's engine growled like a dying beast, each jolt sending a spike of pain through my side where Zhao's knife had grazed me back in the steelworks. I gripped my pipe, its weight a comfort against the uncertainty chewing my gut, and kept my eyes on the dark road ahead. Yanyan sat beside me, her knife strapped tight, her face set in that stubborn scowl I'd come to love and dread. She was fiddling with that damn note again—the masked figure's cryptic scribble about Wuhan's heart and trusting shadows. It set my teeth on edge, not because I didn't trust her, but because I didn't trust him. Whoever this shadow was, he'd saved her, sure, but nobody moved like that—ghost-fast, precise—without an agenda.