CHAPTER 8: After the Red Dot
The safehouse lights flickered like dying pulse monitors.
Wáng Shuǒrán stood in the silence, her blouse unbuttoned, blood on her knuckles from the mirror she'd shattered. Her reflection had stared too long. Accused too loudly. She hadn't liked the answers it gave.
The railing. The dot. His face.
She had seen it. Not guilt. Not fear. Something worse.
Grief.
She hissed as antiseptic hit her skin, but didn't flinch. Wú Xīnlĕi knelt in front of her with a med kit, fingers steady.
"I figured you'd be punching something," Xīnlĕi said, voice dry.
"The mirror started it," Shuǒrán muttered.
The silence between them wasn't empty. It held the unspoken question. They both knew what it meant to see Lín Yàonán again—and to realize he hadn't pulled the trigger.
"He raised his hands," Shuǒrán said finally. "Not in surrender. In warning."
"And you still think he's a pawn?"
Shuǒrán's mouth twitched. "No. I think he's something worse. A variable."
Xīnlĕi wrapped the bandage tighter.
Across the compound, Táng Jiēhào sat in the dark of the server room, headphones on, tracking the ghost of a signal.
A comm intercept from earlier that night had rerouted through Team Black's inner mesh, then vanished. But not before leaving residue—a frequency marker he recognized from Jian's legacy control chain.
He flagged it. Analyzed. Clean. Deliberate. Not Jian's.
He tapped into Xīnlĕi's feed.
"Tell her someone overrode Gāo's shot authorization. External signal. Not Black. Not Jian."
Xīnlĕi relayed it.
Shuǒrán's eyes sharpened. "Are you sure?"
"Positive," Jiēhào said. "Whoever did it used an encrypted route high enough that Jian's override got clipped. Someone above or beside him."
Shuǒrán didn't respond. Just stood.
In her pocket, her burner buzzed. She pulled it out and read the text:
He didn't miss. He was never going to pull the trigger.
No sender. No trace.
She didn't show Xīnlĕi.
She didn't have to.
Yàonán lay flat on a cot in a concrete room lit by a single blinking light.
The file had been dropped hours ago. He hadn't opened it. He didn't need to.
Yàonán had seen the way Shuǒrán looked at him—like she'd stripped him bare with a single glance.
She knew he hadn't pulled the trigger.
But she didn't know the worst part:
He had considered not stopping it.
He wasn't sure what scared him more—that he moved too late, or that he still wanted her to believe he never would've let it happen.
A knock on the lockless door. Qín Mùyĕ entered like a shadow, threw a sealed envelope at his chest, and left without a word.
Inside was a photograph. Shuǒrán, before. White dress. Laughing. Alive.
On the back:
Pretty things are only useful when they obey. —J
Yàonán stared at the photo. He didn't feel anger. Or grief.
He felt clarity.
He tore the photo once.
Then again.
And again.
Until it was gone.