✪★ Ch. 6 ★✪

Dusk is approaching when James determines that nothing more can be gained from continued surveillance of the hospital.

Silently, Steve is relieved. He’s never been particularly great at ‘hurry-up-and-wait’, and he suspects that his inability to sit with the same level of uncanny stillness that James has maintained for hours on end has managed to agitate the former assassin.

After a final visual sweep, James puts away his scope and they abandon the rooftop, moving down to ground level and heading for the hospital entrance.

Both Steve and James had agreed upon civilian clothing for this op, tactical gear being far too conspicuous for the public setting. For the same reason, the shield, too, had to be left behind.

Low-drawn baseball caps help to conceal their features, the growing length of Steve's hair and beard providing him with an extra bit of coverage. That had been James’ suggestion, and Steve has to admit that the new, longer length—so different from the clean-cut style Captain America is known for—has done remarkable things for his ability to fly under the radar.

Shapeless, nondescript clothing completes their look, making Steve and James appear as close to average civilians as possible.

As they head inside the building, Steve instinctively adjusts his movement to match James’ deliberate, slightly expedient stride and tries not to be surprised at how easily it gets them through the lobby.

It’s something Natasha has spent a good amount of time working to teach him. How to modify his body language, use it to manipulate others’ perceptions—the basics of Spy 101. ‘Most people,’  she’d told him, once,  ‘-won’t attempt to stop a person if they walk purposefully enough, don’t allow for eye-contact, and generally appear to know what they’re doing and where they are going.’

James apparently follows this same line of reasoning.

Steve will never be as good as Natasha, certainly not the Winter Soldier, but there’s no denying that Nat’s lessons are working in his favor, now.

He and James head straight for the elevator on the far side of the lobby and nobody approaches them. Even the friendly-looking staff at the front desk don’t attempt to engage them. Steve’s shoulders ease just slightly, and he drops down to the next goal on his mental checklist: finding the encoded message located somewhere within the building.

Hours of reconnaissance had made it apparent that whatever Hydra-related activities are—or were—carried out at this site, the place still houses a fully functioning hospital, complete with non-Hydra personnel and ordinary patients.

Hydra seems to have an affinity for infiltrating established corporations; burying its enterprises beneath the cover of legitimate businesses. Since the fall of SHIELD, Steve and his team have come across a number of establishments that were completely unaware of Hydra’s infiltration—until confrontation forced the neo-Nazi organization to reveal itself.

Whether that is the case with this hospital or not, Steve suspects anything Hydra-related is likely to be found below-ground, concealed from non-Hydra personnel.

Sure enough, once they get inside the elevator, a hidden panel slides away at the press of James' thumb, revealing access to a sub-level within the building.

James spares a glance in Steve’s direction, ensuring that he is ready, before he pushes the button, triggering the elevator to begin a smooth descent.

The doors, once they reach the sub-level, open whisper-quiet to reveal a long, dimly lit corridor stretching out before them. The only light comes from the backup LEDs glowing murkily along the upper walls, and the bright interior lighting spilling from the elevator. At the end of the corridor, Steve's enhanced vision can just make out what appears to be a wide space, filled with some kind of equipment.

Just as he's beginning to wonder whether they should have brought flashlights, James steps from the elevator, activating what must be a motion sensor, triggering the bright lights in the ceiling to switch on one by one, down the corridor and into the room at the end. Steve fights a twinge of unease, the display dragging up the memory of stepping into Zola’s “brain”—the very nerve-center of Hydra’s organization, burrowed beneath SHIELD's foundation like a particularly bloodthirsty tick.

James follows the progression of the lighting, a quiet stalk down the corridor, drawing his gun from a hidden holster. Steve, drawing his own weapon, follows at his six.

The room, when they reach the end, is larger than Steve had expected and looks to have been abandoned with some haste, it’s floor scattered with loose papers, doors and drawers of various refrigeration units, storage shelves, and metal racks left hanging askew.

A good deal of shattered glass crunches underfoot as they move carefully through the room, ensuring that the vast space is as empty as the silence would suggest.

Spaced evenly down the center of the room are what look like small surgical “stations”, each furnished with industrial-grade lighting angled over large, stainless-steel tables equipped with heavy-duty restraints.

Wheeled, surgical stands are situated at each station, one of which still holds what looks like a bone saw; dull and rust-stained. Silent. Impotent.

Steve forces himself to look away from the tool, to suppress the nauseating horror that twists through his gut when he considers the implications of  restraints  being coupled with things like surgical equipment and bone saws.

He turns, only to have his gaze fall upon the barred cells lining the walls down the right side of the room, each containing a bolted down cot with further adjoining restraints.

Cots and restraints. Barred cells and man-sized steel tables. There is no way for Steve to fool himself. No way that he can deny what is right in front of his eyes. It’s quite clear: This place was designed for, and had functioned as, a site for human experimentation.

Unhelpfully, the scene calls to mind the dozens of photographs Steve had found stored within the Winter Soldier’s file. Hydra had spent a great deal of time surveilling the effects of the numerous experiments they’d subjected upon their most valuable prisoner. One image, in particular, forces its way to the front of Steve’s eidetic memory: “the subject” crouched and naked, plaintively gripping the bars of his cell. Though his body language was pleading, it was visibly apparent that the man in that cell didn’t expect any help from his captors; his head had been angled downward; long, dark hair completely obscuring his features.

Steve’s chest squeezes, fingers clutching numbly around the grip of his gun.  It could have been here,  he thinks. Bucky—James—could have been kept in any one of these cells. Could have been tortured and experimented upon in this very room.

He swallows tightly, bile burning hot at the back of his throat as he jerks his gaze away from the cage-like compartments, dragging in a quiet, shuddering breath.

-

The Soldier moves through the experimentation lab with the Captain at his back and tries not to wonder if Hydra’d ever held him in this specific location. He doesn’t remember, and all attempts to pull forth a memory only serve to remind him of the echoing blankness where memory should lie.

There is nothing—specifically—about this particular place that is familiar.

At the same time,  everything about it digs claws into his fractured mind.

His eyes catch on old IV bags—dried-out and limp, left hanging from various stands and crumpled atop stainless-steel workbenches—and the acid burn of experimental drugs being pumped into his bloodstream echoes through his veins; frozen fire that would begin with the bite of a needle, then spread, slowly, relentlessly, through his whole body.

He steps around a number of scalpels scattered across the floor—left as they’d been dropped by people in too much of a hurry to retrieve them, gleaming dull beneath the bright light from above—and recalls, intimately, the searing bite of their blades.

How, at first, there is no real pain. Not because he’d been given any anesthetics; because, when that sort of trauma is introduced, there is always a short, adrenaline-fueled moment where the brain scrambles to interpret what is happening; a quiet, dread-filled numbness extant even as the razor’s edge cuts deep through tissue and muscle. Only then,  after, comes the bright agony of flesh splitting open; the animal-like terror of having one’s insides exposed to a room full of ruthless, hungry-eyed scientists; the nauseating sensation of blood spilling warm and wet over blanched-white skin.

The muffled crack of his bones being broken, again and again, so that the doctors could record specific variances in his healing factor under a range of different circumstances—sleep-deprivation, starvation, exsanguination—is another not-distant memory, and the sight of a rust-stained bone-saw lying harmlessly on one of the surgical trays has his body breaking out in a cold sweat.

The metal arm recalibrates—a mechanical manifestation of his distress—and he rolls his shoulders, forcing himself to loosen clenched muscles, mentally shoving the unwelcome echoes of his own panic-stricken terror into the darkest corner of his mind.

Deliberately, he re-centers his focus. Goes to that quiet space inside his head where nothing touches him. Where the only important thing is completing the mission.

Thoughts composed, emotions shut away, he ghosts through the remainder of the lab and feels nothing at all.

At the far end of the room, an open doorway leads to another, smaller room, and as they approach, the Soldier can hear the faint mechanical whir of machinery coming from within. Stepping inside reveals rows of filing cabinets, shelves covered with dusty boxes, and a small accumulation of computers.

This has to be where the signal is coming from.

The Soldier moves to tuck away his weapon when something draws him short.

He stops, executing a slow pivot, glancing back the way he and the Captain had come, and hears it again: the low whir of the elevator descending. The soft, whisper-shush of its doors sliding open.

Were he not enhanced, he’d never have picked up on the faint sounds. As it is, the quiet thuds of at least a dozen sets of booted feet filing from the elevator reaches his ears, even at a distance of more than two-hundred feet, even with walls between him and the source.

Judging by the way his body has gone taut, the Captain has caught the sounds too, his hand tightening around the grip of his weapon as his gaze darts to the Soldier’s.

His brow is deeply furrowed, eyes dark and uncompromising, and the Soldier knows, with a sudden surety, that the Captain has no intention of shrinking back from what is almost certainly going to be a deadly confrontation. That he means to fight.

Good. The Soldier means to fight as well.

He dips his head, offering a shallow nod of acknowledgement, and moves to press himself against one side of the doorway, weapon raised and ready. The Captain, with a small nod of his own, mirrors the Soldier’s position on the opposite side.

Silently, they wait.

-

As the sounds of booted feet travel from the elevator toward the lab, moving steadily closer, Steve counts footfalls, estimating somewhere around a dozen potential hostiles.  A surreptitious glance around the doorway confirms his guess as three, four-man units file through the doorway on the far side of the room.

Even without the red insignia affixed to their tac gear, Steve doesn’t doubt that these operatives are Hydra. Armed with deadly assault rifles, they move through the lab with practiced proficiency, quickly sweeping the room. It won’t be long before he and James are discovered, positioned just inside the computer room.

They need to engage. It’s now or never.

James, evidently, has come to the same conclusion. In one fluid, lightening-quick movement, he leans around the corner, takes aim, and fires off three successive shots, ducking back behind cover immediately afterward.

Shouts of alarm precede the sound of three dead operatives hitting the floor, and a rapid scuffling follows as the remaining Hydra agents scramble for cover. There isn't much to be found, in that room. A factor which tilts the odds ever so slightly in Steve’s and James’ favor.

Steve takes aim during the brief chaos and picks off another two of the operatives, keeping a mental tally of how many bullets are left between him and James.

Theoretically, based solely upon the number of Hydra operatives still alive, there are more than enough rounds between the two of them to take down all of their enemy.

Realistically, however, the Hydra agents are armed with weapons that are both substantially more powerful, and have considerably more ammunition. Against that sort of firepower, the wall behind which Steve and James are taking cover won’t hold for long. If they stay where they are, they’re little more than sitting ducks.

The best way to even the odds—the only way he can think of, at the moment—is to force the agents to engage them in close combat. He and James are stronger than the operatives, Faster. Certain to prevail if guns are taken out of the equation. For that to work, though, they’ll need to jump right into the middle of things; avoid getting pinned down; and hopefully, not get shot in the process.

They’ll need a distraction.

Steve glances around—looking for something he can use, wishing, fervently, that he had his shield.

A voice calls from the other room, the clipped, rapidly-spoken Russian incomprehensible to Steve. He glances to James for clarification, and sees a flash of something like guilt flare in silver-blue eyes, there and gone again in little more than an instant.

“They want me to surrender,” James translates, voice low; inflectionless. “They say they’ll spare you, if I surrender. They’ll let you go.”

Steve squares his jaw, face set in what he knows are stubborn lines. “Even if that were true,” he says, reaching to grab a chair from one of the computer stations. “I wouldn’t go.”

He takes a precious moment to pause and meet James’ eyes. Holds on to that pale gaze. “Not without you.”

Then he hurls the chair as hard as he can into the room where Hydra waits, aiming for where his near-perfect recall identifies as a strategic position for the operatives to have taken cover.

It’s the best diversion he can come up with on such short notice, and he uses the small advantage it offers, darting out into the lab as the agents instinctively aim at the thing hurtling toward them, going for whoever he can take out amid the distraction.

-

The Soldier follows the Captain into the lab without hesitation, charging into the room full of armed hostiles at the other man’s heels. Mentally, he curses the Captain’s recklessness even as he wonders at his own instinctive reflex to follow him right into the proverbial lion’s den.

Still, rash as it was, using that chair as a distraction allows the Captain to take out another Hydra agent, dropping their numbers to a far more manageable six.

The Captain darts into the middle of a small cluster of three, slashing at one with a sharp blade while simultaneously slamming his knee into the gut of another, yanking that agent’s gun from his loosened grip and using his momentum to bring the weapon crashing into the third operative’s temple.

A few feet away, the Soldier takes out another enemy, driving his metal fist into the combatant’s face and crushing his skull, effectively stopping him from depressing the trigger of the rifle he’d had aimed at the Captain.

Another operative goes down with the Soldier’s ka-bar embedded in his throat, and then, just like that, there is only one agent left to take care of.

The Soldier turns his attention to the remaining operative, the pale-faced man already backing away, hands raised and rifle abandoned in the face of what he clearly recognizes is his imminent demise. The Soldier stalks forward, ready to end this even as his tactical brain snags on the fact that Hydra had sent only a dozen agents to bring in the Winter Soldier.

Even without the Captain’s support, the Soldier’s training and enhancements make it highly unlikely that such a small team of operatives could bring him down. Not with him working at full capacity. Not without major injuries or a significant amount of drugs slowing him down.

Maybe this paltry sum of operatives is all that Hydra’d had to work with. With Pierce dead, and so many of the world’s governments actively working to destroy what’s left of Hydra’s remains, it’s likely that their numbers are dwindling; bleeding out alongside whatever lingering power or authority they might have left.

No wonder they are so keen to get the Soldier back.

With their most valuable asset back under their control, Hydra wouldn't have to worry about scrambling for power. They could go underground. Rebuild their strength and bide their time. Wait for another, convenient opportunity to strike; a move big enough to put their players back on the board. Hydra thrived amid chaos, and the Winter Soldier was trained to create it. To cause havoc. Reap war. Change history.

 Shape the century.

All they had to do was get him back. And they  would , the Soldier knew. They’d stop at nothing to force him back under their control. He’d broken for them once already. It would be so easy for them to do it again. Press along barely-healed fractures; shatter him back to pieces.

 ‘Wipe him and start over.’

 No.  The Soldier’s left arm whines, metal plates shifting and tightening in a rapid series of sharp movements.  That isn’t going to happen. Because he’s never going back. He’ll die first. And if he can’t quite manage it himself, the Captain will. He promised.

The Soldier doesn’t have to look to know that the Captain has finished neutralizing the three operatives on the other side of the room. He closes in on the last remaining enemy, set to eliminate whatever small threat he poses.

The sound of the elevator descending makes him pause, gaze swiveling toward the doorway..

His eyes catch upon the single figure stepping from the lift.  Male  , his mind catalogs rapidly, automatically.  Dark-haired, thickly bearded.  Moving purposefully toward the room, but not hurrying. Outfitted in dark tac gear.  Threat assessment—

He doesn’t recognize the man. He doesn’t, but…

  —high.

A shiver of unease scrapes down the Soldier’s spine.

There’s something about him. Something that has the Soldier’s brain shrieking in recognition, fighting to unearth long-buried memories.

His attention is split between the final operative and the new arrival for only a second, but it’s enough of a window for the retreating Hydra agent to pull his sidearm, firing upon the Soldier while his gaze is turned elsewhere.

The Captain’s shout of alarm resonates beneath the report of the gun as the Soldier jerks his chin to the left, barely managing to avoid the brunt of the bullet’s trajectory, the shot carving a searing line along his cheekbone. His gaze has left the other man, the newcomer, for the barest of moments.

It’s all the opening the other man needs.

In an instant, the newcomer is slamming into the Soldier, sending him flying across the room from the force of a single, powerful kick.

The Soldier crashes into a refrigeration unit, glass door shattering as he smashes bodily through the front of it. Knife-like shards dig deep into his back, slicing even deeper as he rolls quickly back to his feet.

This man, the newcomer, is  fast. Strong. As strong as the Soldier himself.

 Enhanced, the Soldier’s mind whispers, struggling to unearth the knowledge running just beneath the surface of his frozen, wasteland of a memory.  Dangerous.

He’s one of Hydra’s. A soldier. A killer. Like the Winter Soldier but…different. There’s more, much more to it than that, but the Soldier can’t remember.

He shakes his head, advancing toward the enhanced operative, metal arm whirring. It doesn’t matter, he concludes. The newcomer is just one more enemy. A threat—substantial as it may be — that the Soldier needs to take down.

He reaches for a blade, brain catching on the disconcerting realization that the enhanced operative hasn’t pulled a weapon of his own, and then—

“Желание.”

The Soldier stumbles.  “Нет.”

The operative watches him, eyes cool. Intelligent. Calculating.  “Ржавые.”

“Stop.” He raises a shaky hand to his temple. “Стой.”

The operative doesn’t stop.

-

Steve turns away from tying up the unconscious body of the agent who’d fired upon James— who’d jerked with the force of the shot, and Steve had thought.  For a moment he’d been  sure  that James had been hit…and Steve had  lost  it, launching himself across the room, slamming his clenched fist into the wide-eyed agent’s jaw and dropping him like a ton of bricks…

He’d heard glass shatter a moment later, and had known that the other operative—the bearded man who’d stepped from the elevator—was in play.

Now he sees James stumble, face stricken, as the bearded man begins to utter a familiar set of Russian trigger phrases.

James is pale, his voice shaky as he says,‘Stop’, in English. Again in Russian.

The bearded man pays no mind to the plea, the desperate quality of James’ voice. He goes down the list of trigger words with ruthless indifference, the fourth falling from his lips just as Steve barrels into him, knocking him to the ground.

The operative flips back to his feet with a snarl, that cold, calculating gaze suddenly turned upon Steve, and the sudden shift in attention reminds Steve of fighting the Winter Soldier.

On the Helicarrier, and that bridge in DC, the Winter Soldier’d had eyes only for his mission. He’d ignored everything outside of that, engaging others only when they came between him and his target. This operative shares a similar methodology, his attention fixed on Steve only now, when Steve’s put himself between James and him.

He draws his sidearm, but Steve moves faster, knocking the weapon from his grip before he can fully raise it.

The operative pulls a knife next, swiping at Steve with vicious intent and Steve blocks the attack, driving a kick into the operative’s gut, knocking him back once more. The operative is  strong, stronger than any normal man—but Steve is stronger.

He’s got an advantage of experience—has fought plenty of enhanced individuals, including those with the single-minded ferocity of the Winter Soldier—and, for once, has zero hesitation about throwing everything he has into this fight.

The helpless horror he’d felt during his first passage through this room, with its remnants of Hydra’s inhumane experiments on blatant display; his fury at discovering further evidence of James’ subjection to such sadistic treatment; his vehement determination to keep Hydra from  ever  getting their hands on James again—all of these add fuel to Steve’s blows, and he brings the operative down, quick and merciless, dragging him into an unforgiving chokehold. He doesn’t release the agent until the man goes completely still, lack of oxygen forcing him unconscious.

Steve wants to kill him—this man who’d made James look so afraid—but he makes himself let go, removes his hands before he stops the operative’s breathing entirely. Killing this man, a possible supply of valuable intel, is tactically unsound, he tells himself. He should call in Tony and the others. Let them see what information they can get out of him about Hydra’s plans.

The operative drops from Steve’s grasp, a dead weight, and Steve leaves him where he falls. Turns, instead, to crouch before James: sunk to one knee, unmoving.

His expression is distant, haunted. Barely visible behind the dark tangle of his hair.

“James,” Steve says, soft.

James doesn’t so much as twitch.

His head stays angled downward and Steve aches to reach out and touch, to try to ground him, but doesn’t dare.

“You’re okay,” he murmurs, offering platitudes in place of contact.“You’re okay, James. Come back, please. Come back to me.”

A muffled scrape sounds from behind him, and Steve jolts, glancing over his shoulder to see the Hydra operative raising a gun.  Stupid, stupid,  he berates himself, even as he automatically angles his own body to cover James’.

It’s been barely a minute. Far too soon for the operative to have awoken. But that’s no excuse. Steve should have never allowed himself to get so completely caught off guard. He should have tied the man up—made sure he was completely restrained—before getting so focused on James he’d all but forgotten the murderous threat behind him.

Now it’s too late. The operative’s finger curls around the trigger and the only thing left for Steve to do is—

The shot rings out, a sharp  crack  that cuts through the silence in the room.

Steve—entire body braced for impact—feels nothing, only a jolt of shock as the perfect circle of a bullet wound blooms on the operative’s forehead, centered neatly between his eyes. Relief, bright and visceral, slices through him as he watches the operative’s body slump to the floor, blood pooling around his head like a gruesome, crimson halo.

He turns back to find James lowering his gun, expression only marginally less empty than it had been moments ago, gaze fixed on the dead operative.

Steve draws a shaky breath.

“James. You with me?”

James blinks in rapid succession, gaze sliding quick across Steve’s face.

“Да.”

He doesn’t know if James realizes he’d spoken in Russian but this word, at least, Steve understands and the confirmation is enough. He briefly closes his eyes, shoulders relaxing ever so slightly.

“Okay.”

Dragging a hand through his hair, he lets out a quiet breath. “Good. That’s— I’m gonna call Tony. Have him get a containment crew down here to deal with…” he waves a hand to indicate the unspoken ‘all of this.’

James says nothing. Doesn’t move. His eyes rove in slow, restless sweeps, stopping for short increments upon the doorway; the myriad of dead operatives; the pool of blood inching gradually closer to his left boot.

Steve forces himself not to press. To stand and step away, pulling out his phone as he goes.

The ensuing conversation is…frustrating. In the end, though, it accomplishes what Steve wants, which is Tony agreeing to send in people to handle the clean-up and retrieval of all useful intel.

As soon as he gets Tony’s confirmation, Steve hangs up.

His gaze sweeps across the demolished room littered with bodies, crushed glass, and bullet-holes, and settles upon the doorway leading to the small computer room. The steady hum of the machines beyond reminds him that he and James have yet to check for another segment of code.

He wonders if there’s even anything  to  find. Perhaps this altercation, this ambush, had been the only reason behind leading them here. Maybe this was the end goal; to capture the Winter Soldier. Kill him if that turned out to be impossible. Steve doesn’t know. Can’t know, without more information.

Whatever the case, looking at James—back on his feet, expression shuttered and unreadable—Steve wants nothing more than to leave this hellhole; to put this mission on hold; to  take a break, if only for James’ sake.

There’s no chance of that happening, Steve knows, but he can’t help the feeling of disappointment when James states flatly, “The code. We still need to access it.”

With James, Steve is beginning to realize, the mission comes first. It is his singular focus, rarely impacted by variables like  discomfort  or  unease.

This realization is further cemented when James, after waiting for Steve’s nod, turns and heads decisively for the computer room exposing his back for the first time.

Steve, who’d started to follow, stumbles, drawing in a sharp breath.

His back.

His back is—

“James.”

-

Ingrained conditioning has the Soldier freezing mid-step in response to the Captain’s tone.

The sound—the urgent quality of the Captain’s voice—raises his hackles, and he glances over his shoulder, instinct driving him to search for the threat. All he finds is the Captain, gaze fixed intently upon the Soldier’s back.

“Your back,” the Captain says. “Your back it’s— You’re  bleeding.”

He strides forward, hand outstretched as if to touch, and the Soldier tenses, twisting to angle his mangled flesh out of the Captain’s reach, backing away from his approach.

The Captain freezes at the response, eyes darting up to meet the Soldier’s. His mouth is tight and unhappy, but he doesn’t try to move any closer.

“They are,” the Soldier reports, defensive, off-balanced, “predominantly superficial wounds. From falling through the glass. They are not mission-critical.”

The Captain’s brows draw together, the words having directly the opposite effect the Soldier had intended. “B— James. I don’t  care  about—” The Captain cuts himself off, takes a deep breath. “Let me check them, please? Can I just—see for myself that they are not as bad as they look?”

There is no order hidden within the Captain’s words. The Soldier seizes upon the allowance, the small freedom to choose, and shakes his head.

With his attention focused upon them, the wounds  hurt —searing pain that spans from the tops of his shoulders all the way down to his hips.

The hurt is bearable, if he focuses his thoughts elsewhere. Most pain is.

But that doesn’t mean he wants the injuries laid out beneath the Captain’s scrutiny. Just the thought of that, of the Captain at his back, assessing gaze on his torn flesh, close enough to  touch  if he felt so inclined—

The Soldier swallows, stomach twisting into a tight knot. He can’t think of something he’d like less.

Except then the Captain’s face falls, visibly disappointed by the Soldier’s refusal, and he finds himself assaulted by another, equally unpleasant sentiment.

 It’s unfair, the Soldier thinks, bitterly.

With a single look, just the expression on his face, the Captain has managed to drag out of him emotions the Soldier can hardly  identify, let alone  combat.

Not for the first time, the Soldier feels the unwelcome urge to give in. To surrender to the Captain’s request, without even understanding  why.

For a split second—a bare, frustrated moment—the Soldier almost wishes the Captain would order him. Then, at least, the Soldier could lose himself in blind obedience, allowing all of the confusing emotions to be buried beneath the ingrained compulsion to  comply.

-

James is very clear about not wanting Steve to get anywhere near his injuries. More than just refusing, he angles his entire body away from Steve, muscles gone tense, pale gaze wary and watchful, as if he expects Steve to ignore his refusal, to do what he wants regardless of James’ resistance.

Steve keeps perfectly still. While the realization that James considers Steve capable of such a thing makes his stomach roil with nausea, Steve really doesn’t have to wonder  why  James might come to such a conclusion. The very room they’re standing in attests to the fact that James’ has had his agency taken from him far too many times.

And… James doesn’t know him.

It’s understandable that he’s wary of Steve, that Steve will have to give him time. Time to learn that he isn’t a threat. That James can trust him.

For now, Steve decides to let the matter drop. There’s still the mission, and they should focus on handling it and getting out of here before Tony’s crew comes through. James definitely won’t want to be around when that happens.

“Alright,” Steve relents, taking a small step back and changing the subject. “Let’s go see if there’s anything on the computers.” Giving James a wide berth, he heads toward the computer room, allowing James to follow, to keep Steve in his sight.

It turns out that there is something there to find on the computers after all. As soon as James activates it, another screen fills with unrecognizable, scrolling script.

James’ reaction is much the same as it had been the last time he’d been exposed.

This time, when Steve murmurs his own trigger phrase, he endeavors to catch James as gently as possible, careful about the glass embedded in his back, the bloody wounds still seeping crimson into his dark clothing.

-

James heads for the bathroom almost as soon as Steve unlocks the tiny motel room he’d reserved for the night—delaying only as long as it takes to do his usual, careful sweep of the interior.

Watching him go, Steve drops his duffel onto one of the two beds, unzips it, and pulls out the first-aid kit he keeps inside. He takes a moment to steel himself, certain that what he plans to do next will not be easy, and then approaches the bathroom, hovering just outside the doorway.

“James, can I… Would it be okay if I took a look at your back now?”

He chooses his words carefully, avoiding anything that could sound like a command, but unable to quash his urgent need for James to, for once, just let him help.

James glances Steve’s way, turning his gaze from where he’d been assessing the damage through the mirror and lifting one shoulder in an impassive shrug. Steve suppresses a wince. He can’t imagine that it doesn’t hurt—to move in that way—though James’ expression offers no indication of pain.

“Unnecessary,” James says. “It will heal on its own. I’ve had worse. It always heals.”

Steve forces himself not to think about what ‘worse’ entails. It’s a horrific concept, and he doesn’t want to get sidetracked.

“Maybe,” he concedes. “But it’ll heal much more quickly if we tend to it. There’s probably pieces of glass still in the wounds. They need to be cleaned out.”

James motions to the tiny bathtub, as if in compromise. “I’ll shower.”

“That’s not—” Steve pushes down helpless frustration. “That isn’t good enough.”

“I don’t need—” James begins, and Steve takes a quick step forward. Only one, but James still startles, backing into the counter behind him.

“Please, B—” Steve swallows. Draws a shallow breath. “Please,” he repeats, voice quiet and even. “Let me do this. Please let me help.”

Finally, James relents.

Jaw clenched tight, he slowly turns to  face the mirror, mutely presenting his back to Steve.

His whole frame is stiff with tension, and though Steve doesn’t glance up to look, he can feel the intensity of James’ gaze, tracking his every move through the mirror.

Steve ducks his head, avoiding that gaze as he steps forward, focusing instead on the task before him.

The shirt is a lost cause. The dark fabric is ragged with tears, tacky with drying blood, and Steve feels no compunction about cutting it off with the medical-grade scissors in the first-aid kit.

The material sticks, in places, to wounds where James has bled more extensively, but when Steve pauses, thinking to wet the cloth to make the separation less painful, James simply tears the shredded garment from his torso, dropping the fabric onto the floor and causing a number of the bloody slashes to reopen.

Steve frowns at the harsh treatment, but keeps his mouth shut. Despite the popular theory, he knows when to pick his battles, and getting a good look at Jame’s injuries—many of which are weeping anew—is where his focus is better aimed.

He leans in a bit closer, looking but not touching, and sees that he was right about the glass. Dozens of tiny shards glitter across James’ back, buried in his wounds, glinting beneath the bathroom light.

“These need to come out,” Steve says, briefly lifting his gaze to meet James’ through the mirror. “I’m going to get them out.”

James doesn’t answer, and Steve hadn’t really expected him to; had only wanted to offer a fair warning before he grabs the tweezers and begins the thankless task of removing all the shards from James’ skin, dropping the fragments into the sink one by one.

James remains silent; keeping still; not even flinching when Steve has to dig into some of the wounds to get at pieces lodged more deeply.

When he’s sure that all the glass is gone, Steve soaks a cloth in lukewarm water and gently, carefully, washes James’ skin, rinsing and repeating until all of the wounds are clean, dabbing up the excess water with a segment of gauze. He pauses, then, taking a moment to survey James’ back with a critical eye.

With most of the blood out of the way, Steve can see enough to be sure that he won’t need to do any stitching and he grabs the salve with a silent breath of relief, turning the small jar of soothing ointment in his hands as he sweeps his gaze from James’ shoulders to hips, and decides he might as well start from the top.

Dipping his fingers into the salve, Steve smooths the balm gingerly across James’ tender skin, carefully addressing each wound. He keeps his touches light, moving as gently as possible, focused on minimizing any pain.

For a long moment, his world narrows down to this task; making sure he doesn’t press too hard, touch too rough.

Maybe that’s why he doesn’t realize, at first, that something’s changed. That, while his back stays just as rigid as it’s been since he’d turned, and he still hasn’t made a sound—James is…moving .

It’s subtle, almost imperceptible, but once Steve starts paying attention it’s hard to miss the fact that James is listing forward, body arching  away  from Steve’s hands, trying to avoid, as much as possible, the way Steve is now touching him. His own hands, metal and flesh alike, have slid forward to curl around the lip of the sink, gripping tight to the porcelain edge as his body adopts a fine tremor, muscles shivering beneath Steve’s fingers.

Steve freezes.

Slowly, carefully, he lifts salve-slick fingers away from James’ skin, raising them into the air where they hover; no longer touching. His gaze darts to the mirror, eyes searching James’ face for signs of distress, but beyond the dark curtain of his hair, James’ expression is almost completely blank. His eyes are open, but empty, staring vacantly into the middle-distance, the smallest of furrows etched between his brows. His jaw is tight, mouth pressed into a flat, inexpressive line.

“James,” Steve says, voice low, almost a whisper. “Are you alright? Am I— Am I hurting you?”

Steve’s voice—or maybe it’s the fact that he’s removed his hands—seems to draw James back from wherever it is that he’d gone and he blinks, lashes fluttering as his eyes lose some of that unfocused haze. He swallows, tongue darting across red, chapped lips before he finally responds to Steve’s question.

“Doesn’t—” He cuts off, dragging in a stuttering breath. “Doesn’t hurt.”

Steve’s eyes catch upon the unsteady rise and fall of James’ chest, the way his shoulders are rounded ever so slightly forward. “Should… Can I…?” His hands linger in the air above James’ back; still not touching.

James nods, a small jerky movement. His grip stays tight around the sink.

Steve isn’t convinced. James clearly doesn’t  want  Steve touching him. But. His back still needs the attention, and Steve might as well finish what he’d started.

When Steve puts his hands back on him, James shudders all over, sliding right back into that blank place he’d gone to before and Steve…

Steve  hates  it. It feels a little bit like heartbreak, watching James go away like that, knowing it’s because Steve is touching him. He swallows bitterly, attending to the rest of the lacerations as quickly as possible, wiping his hands clean on the washcloth beside the sink when he’s done.

It takes a moment, once Steve’s taken his hands completely away, but James finally blinks back from wherever he’d gone, glancing at Steve through the mirror to be sure he’s finished.

“All done,” Steve confirms, and James nods, unclenching his hands from the fragile porcelain of the sink and sliding away, distancing himself as much as he can in the small space.

He watches silently as Steve packs away the medical supplies, zipping up the small bag and leaving it on the countertop.

“Go ahead and take a sponge bath tonight,” Steve says on his way out, turning back to face James once he’s stepped past the threshold. “So you don’t end up washing the salve off. You can take a real shower in the morning.”

James’ mouth thins, flattening into a grim line. Without a word, he reaches for the door, shutting it in Steve’s baffled face.

Minutes later, while changing into clothing more suitable for sleep, Steve realizes he’d ended up giving James orders after all.

-

Steve takes position near the window, ready to take the first watch of the night, and thinks about asking. About the enhanced soldier—the operative James had shot dead in that Hydra base.

His brain jumps from one question to the next, restless and inquisitive. Apart from James, Steve’s never seen another enhanced soldier so similar himself. He’d thought James was the only one, but after seeing the operative in the Hydra base...

Is it possible…? Could there be  more  soldiers out there, like him? Like James? How many had Hydra created?

And—a thought that makes his stomach clench with guilt—if there  are  others, how can he be sure that they are loyal to Hydra? What’s to say they’re not like Bucky—like James—had been; brainwashed operatives with no will of their own?

He wants to ask. Needs to know why James hadn’t seemed at all surprised at encountering another enhanced soldier. But when James comes back into the room he studiously avoids Steve’s gaze, expression tight and closed-off, and Steve bites his tongue, swallowing back the veritable barrage of questions.

James looks—ragged.  Exhausted. And no matter how good he is at hiding it, Steve knows he’s got to be hurting; back as torn up as it is.

So Steve decides to let the questions lie, for now.

Let James get some sleep, he thinks. Let him have a reprieve, even if it can only be—by necessity—a short one; they can only leave off the conversation for so long.

—


 Castiel's neighbour is singing again and it takes all of his willpower not to laugh.

It’s not that he's a bad singer, quite the opposite, in fact, he's brilliant. It’s just that without fail every time the man steps into the shower he will power belt of all things: Disney songs. Castiel has never been one to judge another man’s music tastes. He listens to everything from classical music when he's working, to the hardcore screamo of his teen years. His Spotify playlists are practically the definition of organised chaos. It’s just that the man next door, is literally the definition of that very stereotype. With his Golden hair; broad shoulders and a muscle car he pays to park in two spaces he's the perfect all-American boy. But God does that man love Frozen.

When Castiel smokes out the window he hears everything from "At last I see the light  "   to   "Tale as Old as Time"  because the guy always showers with the window open. The songs are almost always love songs. Always filled with sweet sentiments and sung by a man that sings like sex personified. It’s the best part of Castiel’s day but it’s also the worst.

Because Castiel’s neighbour is unspeakably hot. He's exactly the type of man Castiel would flirt with if giving half the chance. Except for every time the guy steps into the elevator with Castiel or they pass each other getting mail, Castiel has to look away. For fear that if he makes eye contact, he'll burst out laughing at the adorable mess of contradictions.

Thankfully they seem to be on opposite schedules. Castiel works most nights at the bar, often passing the guy on his way out the door. So Castiel doesn't feel the need to laugh all that often. Which is both a curse and a blessing in disguise. Castiel doesn’t want to make the man uncomfortable or ashamed. Especially because his passion is oddly kind of sweet. So, he keeps his distance, watches the sunsets and listens from the window.

Castiel's bar does live music sometimes. He works in the kind of "classy" establishment that requires its staff to wear waistcoats and ties but for some reason, it brings in the hipster crowd. Castiel blames the fairy lights that cover the support beams. Meg, his fellow server, blames the fact they've got a smoking garden bigger than a postage stamp. They're probably both right because the crowds come in droves. Gabriel as the owner is the kind of man that can see money in a cornfield. So naturally, he caters to his crowd. They do movie nights every two weeks, board games every month and every Saturday there's a gig.

Castiel loves working the gigs, the bands are always different. Sometimes its rappers, sometimes indie pop. Tonight's group is set up to be a classic rock cover band and the crowds coming in droves. Castiel sells so much IPA he has to go down to the basement and get another keg. And that's just before the show starts. He's just pushing open the basement door, keg balanced on his shoulders. When the band comes in he almost drops the keg on his foot.

Standing on the stage, plugging in a guitar is Castiel’s neighbour. He's wearing ripped jeans, plaid shirt pulled up to reveal a collection of dark tattoos. Castiel forces himself to look away from his forearms and get back to work. If he begins humming "Zero to Hero" under his breath that’s his own business.

"Hey all," Castiel's neighbour says to the crowd. His voice is almost as deep as Castiel’s. "My names Dean Winchester and we are Impala."

The crowd cheers and catcalls, some girls scream, making Dean smile. "I’m happy to see you too," he says. He's got fucking dimples. Castiel almost spills the mojito he's been mixing.

"What’s up with you?" Meg asks, giving him a weird look.

Castiel flushes, "The guy singings my neighbour, I didn't know he was in a band."

"Ah," Meg says, eyebrows raised as she looks from Dean to Castiel and back again. "He's hot right?"

Castiel swallows and gives a panicked nod. He has no idea how he's going to deal with the Dean singing something over than Disney’s greatest hits. The set starts with the blonde drummer hitting her synths as the giant man with a guitar starts to play the opening chords to " Immigrant Song" . Dean screams "  Ahhhh " into the mic and the crowd goes wild.

Deans a great performer he tips the mic just right, bounces and dances when he can, and he sings like a rock god. His band works well together as well. Dean seems to half dance; half compete with the long-haired guitarist when playing the bass. Nodding or dancing beside the redhead on the keyboard and stamping his feet with the girl playing the drums. Castiel ends up taking one of his two allotted shots of tequila. Meg whooping in the corner. Forcing himself to look away, from the gorgeous sight, Castiel serves the thirsty and sweaty crowd their IPA beer. He's swimming in drink orders in no time, but he keeps his ears tuned to the band.

Eventually, the band stops, Dean smiles, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve. "Holy shit you guys are great," He says enthusiastically. "We're going to take a little break but Sammy over here placed a bowl on the bar during set up. If you want to request a song write it on the paper and we'll see what we can do."

The band disappears into the glorified closet that is the "green room" as a tsunami of customers surge towards the bowl. Castiel bites his lip, serves his next pint, then picks up a pen.

The band returns more energetic than ever, the cute blonde drummer coming down to pick up the bowl. "Okay let’s see what we got here," Dean says, grinning into the mic. He chuckles reading the selection, "Oh Jo you're going to love this one," The band crowds in as Dean passes the sheet between the four of them and the blonde girl - presumably Jo - fist pumps the air. Dean picks up the bass and they start playing "Styx - Renegade" almost perfectly.

They keep playing through the requests, some songs Dean throws down claiming they don't know the tunes. There’s a lot of rock covers and some indie numbers. Jo ends up moving the mic to sing Taylor Swift. Dean playing the bass and shaking his hips along to "Shake it Off." Castiel resigns himself to his song being in the reject pile. He makes enough drinks that he ends up loosening his tie.

"Okay," Dean pants, leaning on the mic stand. "I think we've got one more left in us, let's see what we got here." He reaches his hand into the bowl, placing it on the ground and clearing his throat. "Drumroll please, Jo." He jokes, actually getting one as he opens the paper. Castiel watches as his eyes widen in shock.

"Um," He flushes looking around the crowd. Just like in those godamn Disney movies Dean loves, Castiel meets Deans gaze through the crowd. Dean flushes and looks away, "This is not what I was expecting but I think we can make it work, right guys?" Dean passes the note back. Sam nodding after a booming laugh.

Jo, the redhead and Sam start playing a shockingly familiar theme. Dean leans up against the mic, smirks then sings a rocked-up version of "Let it Go.'

Surprisingly the crowds into it. Enthusiastically headbanging and power belting the words. "You gotta love hipster," Meg says head-bopping despite the sarcasm in her tone. Castiel laughs turning away and watching the show. When it’s over, Deans beaming at the crowd.

"You know I teach kindergarten and you guys might have been more into that song than my little guys," Dean says dimpling again. Castiel flushes, his sweet, manly, endearingly contradictory neighbour is in a band and a teacher! How is Castiel going to handle that? No one is equipped to deal with that much perfection and not fall madly in love.

The crowd starts cheering the band’s name as they disappear and Castiel taps Meg's shoulder, "I'm going for my smoke break." He says, desperately needing some air. Meg nods, gesturing to Anna who's working the floor to help her out while Castiel leaves.

Outside Castiel stands by one of the tables, breathing in the cool air in relief before pulling out his packet of smokes.

"Those will kill you; you know." A deep voice says from Castiel's right. Castiel jumps and looks over to see none other Dean Winchester. Castiel drops his lighter.

"Here," Dean says, picking it up and turning it on. Castiel blinks then lean's into his personal space, lighting the cigarette with ease. Dean licks his lips.

"We've all got our vices," Castiel’s says after a drag, "I smoke, you sing Disney in the shower." He says, aiming for nonchalant.

Dean blinks, "You can hear me?" He asks cheeks flushed.

Seeing him up close Castiel notices he legitimately has Disney princess eyes. Castiel can't control the laughter anymore, "Yeah I can hear you," Castiel says chucking still. Dean grimaces.

"So, you picked that song to make fun of me?" Dean asks, eyes hard. Castiel fucking knew this would happen.

"No not at all," He says nervously, putting out his cigarette. "At least not in the way you're thinking. I like hearing you sing."

"Yeah," Dean asks, looking at Castiel through his eyelashes.

Castiel swallows. "Yeah," He says, his voice rough, "I just find it funny, you're not the kinda guy that I'd expect to sing Disney. The contradiction amuses me."

"Oh," Dean says, looking like he's not sure whether he should be offended or not.

Castiel groans and runs his hands through his hair. "Let me start over, I'm Castiel," he says, sticking out his hand. "I really like your voice and your taste in Disney movies."

Dean smiles at Castiel's fumbling, "Dean," shaking hands. "I was not expecting the guy who has a herb garden on his window to be a hot bartender."

"I cook too, the herbs are for that," Castiel says fighting a smile. "I could cook for you sometime if you want?"

Dean raises an eyebrow, staring Castiel down. He swallows hard, face flushed. Finally dropping Deans hand. "I'd like that," Dean says, grinning.

"I've got to get back to work," Castiel says sighing in relief. "Knock at my door tomorrow, around 6ish. I make a mean burger."

Dean bites his lip. "I do like a burger," he says watching Castiel’s ass as he goes.

Dean comes over, moans at Castiel's cooking and laughs at his collection of board games, mixed in with fencing gear. In the morning he sings "Your welcome" in Castiel's shower, Castiel laughing into the pillow after having the best orgasm he's had in years.


“Yuwen Yong’s people called it a “cardiac event,” I’m still waiting on confirmation from the hospital,” Bian Yanmei said, frantically texting in the seat next to Yan Wushi, Yu Shengyan merging into traffic.

Yan Wushi had been on and off the phone since well before sunrise, suppressing misinformation, having his contacts at news outlets push other stories to the forefront, and providing just enough to the press to avoid a complete feeding frenzy. Yuan Xiuxiu was not, strictly speaking, an ally, but they were friendly enough when their interests coincided. Yan Wushi would gut Hehuan given the first opportunity, and he knew Yuan Xiuxiu held similar sentiments about Huanyue, but they were united in their contempt for Sang Jingxing and their need, at present, for Yuwen Yong to stay in his seat of power. Yuan Xiuxiu had enough invested in Qi Corporation and enough sway over their president, Gao Wei, that the disruption in her business caused by political upheaval would be less than ideal, especially with her uncertain control over Hehuan now that she could no longer rely on Sang Jingxing’s support.

Their current problem, which Yan Wushi had brought up to Yuwen Yong countless times, was his utter waste of a son.

Yuwen Yun was self-obsessed and untalented; utterly spoiled by an affluent upbringing, he was devoid of any of his father’s vision or restraint, pretending at being filial in the public eye while he spent his leisure time throwing his family’s money at high end debauchery. His very public marriage to Puliuru Jian’s daughter was meant to yoke him to a respectable lifestyle. Instead he bucked it resentfully at every opportunity.

From what Yuan Xiuxiu had pieced together, Yuwen Yun had been a fixture at an establishment operated by Sang Jingxing for months. Evidence of compromising activity had made its way across Yuwen Yong’s desk in the form of blackmail, but what the photos or videos contained was anyone’s guess; no one could find them. This came on the heels of  the announcement of Yuwen Yong’s campaign strategy for reelection next year, focusing on the Premier’s commitment to fairness and his strong moral character. The situation exacerbated Yuwen Yong’s preexisting heart condition, and he was now undergoing a series of tests to determine the best course of action.

Given what Yan Wushi knew firsthand of the man’s stubbornness, Yuwen Yong did have a chance, however slight, of recovery. In the meantime, Yan Wushi made contingency plans.

Yuwen Yun was more than aware of what Yan Wushi thought of him, as Yan Wushi had essentially told him to his face on a number of occasions. To allow the Yuwen family’s political reach and financial resources to fall under Yuwen Yun’s control would be more than just a headache for Yan Wushi; years of political maneuvering gone to waste in an instant, and the benefit of the occasional blind eye Yuwen Yong graciously turned toward Yan Wushi’s less above board antics suddenly replaced by a vindictive little shit with a chip on his shoulder.

Yan Wushi’s train of thought was interrupted by a series of insistent push notifications, indicating activity over the last few hours. Swiping away from his messages, he opened another app and looked through his most recent updates.

🔵  SQ Baidu search: China Daily

🔵  SQ Baidu search: Banbu

🔵  SQ Baidu search: Yan Wushi

🔵  SQ Baidu search: Yan Wushi Huanyue

🔵  SQ Baidu search: Shen Qiao Xuandu

🔵  SQ Baidu search: Civil Affairs Bureau

🔵  SQ Baidu search: Civil Affairs Bureau Phone

🔵  SQ Voice Call: Civil Affairs Bureau Duration: 47 minutes

🔵  SQ ICBC Account Login

🔵  SQ CMBC Account Login

🔵  SQ Email Account Sign In

🔵  SQ Email Sent. Recipient: [email protected]

🔵  Location Services: Disabled

🔴  Application has been deleted from paired device, please adjust settings to continue

Yan Wushi raised an eyebrow, smile curling up at the corner of his mouth, a little impressed.

“Laoban?” Bian Yanmei asked, confused.

“It’s nothing,” Yan Wushi said, closing his phone and redirecting his attention to the matter at hand.

One problem at a time.

-

Shen Qiao cleaned up the glass first, in single minded focus. He made more tea, drank it, mechanically ate breakfast, showered.

He moved around the apartment listlessly, standing in front of opened drawers full of his own carefully folded clothes, taking out an article of clothing and then folding it again, abandoning the prospect of packing his things and then returning to it minutes later, trapped in a cycle of confusion and paralysis. He’d taken a suitcase of Yan Wushi’s and hesitated, uncomfortable by the idea of stealing something from him, and then had to sit on the floor for fifteen minutes at the ludicrousness of the concept.

He opened his laptop to work, answered a few emails, deleted several hundred more, and closed it again. He wanted to will himself to break down, to cry, something that would lift this feeling of wrongness that had settled into every corner of his being, but he felt trapped, suspended in this strange state of shock.

Yan Wushi was a liar. Yan Wushi was a liar so convincing that some of the things Shen Qiao had imagined through Yan Wushi’s description still felt like real memories, real conversations. His thoughts were a mess of differentiating the last eight months of Yan Wushi’s focused adoration and his willful deception.

What Shen Qiao couldn’t figure out was why?

He opened his phone, running cursory internet searches on himself, on Yan Wushi, trying to parse truth from fabrication. He found and disabled the browser plug-ins installed on his phone and deleted some of his apps, checking through articles and news stories, scouring his personal records, credit cards, bank statements and accounts for outside logins from 8 months prior, and started to piece together how Yan Wushi had meticulously built so credible a cover story.

Shen Qiao was an easy mark, he knew. Isolated, career obsessed, stressed beyond his limits, grieving. Lonely, if he was being honest. Yan Wushi had learned everything about him and presented himself as exactly the kind of person Shen Qiao could rely on without question. Never tried to be too perfect, didn’t change to fit some ideal Shen Qiao might have fantasized about. Just planted the idea that Yan Wushi was already the person Shen Qiao had chosen, and Shen Qiao, always accommodating, afraid of hurting someone he loved any more than the trauma of his fall and injuries already must have, had eagerly been taken in.

It was clever, really; Yan Wushi himself never professed to being a good man. Had even made it a point of fact that he wasn’t, on multiple occasions. He’d lied to Shen Qiao over countless minutiae, stupid little anecdotal evidence to build what was between them now. Had been controlling him from the beginning, Shen Qiao was certain, for access to inside information on Xuandu. Perhaps even strictly for his own entertainment, because having Shen Qiao make a fool of himself amused him. He had dissected Shen Qiao’s existence before their paths had crossed and pinned him down so thoroughly that fitting himself into the empty spaces in Shen Qiao’s life was neat, nearly seamless.

But Xuandu was intact. Shen Qiao’s bank accounts, his investment portfolio, real estate holdings, Qi Fengge’s estate, all easy marks for Yan Wushi to profit from had been left completely untouched.

Even the physical aspect of this entire affair. Shen Qiao thought back through their more intimate moments as the realization that he’d been the one to initiate everything settled like a stone in his stomach. All of this must be by Yan Wushi’s design, but what was the motive?

Yan Wushi had broken him into fragments and examined every part of him, held him up to the sunlight in a way no one ever had before. The scrutiny, the invasion of privacy, being known by Yan Wushi so intimately; of course he wanted answers, even if the only thing he was left with was ownership over how humiliated he felt. He’d seen glimpses of Yan Wushi treating people with this epicaricacy before, and he had still somehow convinced himself that he was Yan Wushi’s singular exception.

…What was wrong with him? Why wasn’t he more horrified?

He recalled fighting with Yu Ai eight months ago, the memory finally in vivid detail. Their conversation had soured in the car on the drive over and they quietly continued in the alcove outside the restrooms on the rooftop of Banbu. As the argument escalated in volume enough for Shen Qiao to feel it was inappropriate, he had walked away from Yu Ai rather than making a scene.

He’d already felt poorly before taking a glass of champagne from a tray to calm his nerves, but it only served to exacerbate the dizzy, nauseous feeling. He couldn’t comprehend the idea that he’d been drugged, then. That Yu Ai, someone he considered family, could be that sort of person.

Kunye had approached and sequestered him to talk more privately about Xuandu’s potential as a publicly traded company. Shen Qiao had shut him down, trying to hide the sweating and disorientation, and attempted to excuse himself. Kunye became belligerent, crowding him against the edge of the balcony, hurling quiet insults and accusations in his face, talking about promises Yu Ai had made about a partnership. Shen Qiao took a step backward, another, reached for anything to steady himself.

The railing tipped backward with a scrape of metal on metal, swinging on the hinge of its remaining bolts, and Shen Qiao was in free fall.

He twisted in the air, making contact with the brick facade, the friction of his clothes on the rough surface changing his trajectory slightly and sending him spinning. He caught himself on an advertising banner three floors below, long enough to slow his descent, but didn’t have the strength to hold on.

Three, four more floors. He hit an awning, the fabric collapsing in on impact, and then hit another, several floors directly beneath it. It held, taut enough to bounce him once before he was rolled off by the steep angle. He remembered seeing a car parked in the no parking zone in front of the building, and nothing after that.

Yan Wushi had taken him to a hospital run by people he knew to be discrete, had protected him when he was at his most vulnerable. He’d hidden him from the people who would have taken immediate advantage of his weakness and asked for forgiveness later, allowed him to recover in private, given him the resources to do so at great personal expense. He had been attentive, affectionate even. Those things didn’t feel fake.

Why did the liberties Yan Wushi had taken with him feel so different from what Yu Ai had done? Wasn’t their goal the same? Why was it so hard to find forgiveness for Yu Ai, while he was standing in the home of a man who had forged and filed their marriage license while Shen Qiao was comatose, hesitating to end this farce with Yan Wushi as if he was afraid to upset the balance of their life together?

What life together? What did that mean, knowing what he knew now? He had almost- they had almost-

Part of Shen Qiao still wanted to-

He shut down this line of thinking entirely. He needed to pack his things and run. He should hire an army of lawyers, should have Yan Wushi arrested, should take out a restraining order against him.

He pulled the cutting board out from under the kitchen island and started slicing vegetables.

-

Yan Wushi’s hand paused on the handle of the door. This would be the first time in a long while that he’d be coming home to an empty apartment, and the reality that he was already so affected by Shen Qiao’s absence irritated him to no end. He couldn’t help but find it convenient that Shen Qiao was the type to extricate himself from Yan Wushi’s life without making a scene. Any longer in his presence and Yan Wushi might have needed an exorcism.

He opened the door.

Shen Qiao was standing over the range, prodding at the aubergines he was stir-frying with long metal chopsticks. “I had a little time to cook, so I thought I might try yu xiang qie zi,” he said, meeting Yan Wushi’s gaze from across the room.

Yan Wushi toed off his shoes, hanging up his coat and placing a cake box on the counter next to Shen Qiao on his way by. “You don’t like food that spicy,” Yan Wushi commented, projecting amusement as he shrugged out of his suit jacket and walked into his bedroom to hang it up. He returned to the kitchen, untucking his dress shirt and unbuttoning his cuffs, rolling them to his elbows and undoing his top three buttons.

“Mn. You enjoy it. I think if I had it more often I could get used to it,” Shen Qiao replied offhandedly, concentrating on the wok.

Yan Wushi leaned his forearms on the marble surface of the countertop, watching as Shen Qiao fussed over their dinner as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred between last night and this morning.

Yan Wushi was used to being the one who kept people on their toes. He was unused to being the recipient of this kind of behavior, and he didn’t particularly like it. If and when Shen Qiao’s memories returned, he’d been counting on that overdeveloped sense of personal shame to send him running from Yan Wushi. This Shen Qiao was not what he was expecting.

Shen Qiao was aware of what Yan Wushi had done. Even if he hadn’t had it confirmed by his phone, Yan Wushi could feel it in the atmosphere between them, see it in the red rims of Shen Qiao’s eyes and the way he was slightly on edge. His posture and mannerisms had changed, more sure of himself and more guarded, catching Yan Wushi’s notice immediately because he’d studied Shen Qiao so closely for so many months. Shen Qiao obviously saw benefits to playing dumb, and that piqued his interest. If Shen Qiao wanted to pretend everything was fine, then Yan Wushi would play along for now.

That didn’t mean he’d make it easy for Shen Qiao.

He stood behind Shen Qiao, sliding one arm around his waist. Taking hold of him by the chin and tilting Shen Qiao’s face toward him, Yan Wushi pressed their lips together. Shen Qiao pulled away slightly with a breathy exhale.

In a fit of childishness, he chased his mouth, kissing Shen Qiao again, filthy, feeling the tension in Shen Qiao’s arm as he clenched one hand into a fist, before ultimately acquiescing and letting it drop to his side. He gently reached up to hold Yan Wushi’s shoulder as if remembering himself.

Yan Wushi pulled away, waiting for the strike, for the accusations, for the truth to finally boil over and ruin everything it touched. He looked into Shen Qiao’s eyes in anticipation.

Shen Qiao’s expression was open and searching, confusion and helplessness settling into the crease of his brow. He opened his mouth to speak.

Yan Wushi took a breath.

Shen Qiao closed his eyes. “Is everything… alright? With work?” he asked softly. “You were out longer than expected.”

“…Not an issue with Huanyue, but some troubling developments with Yuwen Yong,” he said, after regarding Shen Qiao for a moment. He moved out of Shen Qiao’s personal space and he resumed cooking, turning off the range and pulling two shallow dishes from an upper cabinet, opening Yan Wushi’s unobtrusive rice cooker and plating out their respective servings.

“Is he alright?” Shen Qiao asked with genuine concern. He’d coincidentally met Yuwen Yong once on the way out of a doctor’s appointment, and had a favorable impression of the man. “Ah, did you manage to eat lunch today? You left before breakfast,” he recalled. It felt like a hundred years had passed since then.

“He’ll be going in for surgery sometime this week. We’ll see how it goes,” Yan Wushi said, cocking his head to the side with a smile. “I survived. Yu Shengyan brought me enough coffee to reanimate the dead.”

Shen Qiao made a noise in disapproval, adding an extra serving of vegetables to Yan Wushi’s plate. “Su-yisheng is going to yell at you again.”

Yan Wushi untied the cake box with a laugh. “Su-yisheng is younger than Ah-Qiao and I don’t have nearly as much incentive to listen to him,” he said, sliding a small dessert and two little cakes out on a gold tray. “I was in the neighborhood this morning and picked up that guava & passion fruit tart you like. They weren’t out of the osmanthus cakes this time, I know you wanted to try them.”

Shen Qiao flushed a little. “I never mentioned-”

“You were looking at the sign in the display case like it hurt your feelings. You didn’t have to.”

Shen Qiao set their dishes on the counter, Yan Wushi stealing a piece of aubergine before either of them sat down, chewing thoughtfully. “…Probably for the best that I stopped. There’s no way Ah-Qiao is going to be able to finish this.”

“…Is it that spicy?” he asked, a little dismayed.

Yan Wushi picked up a piece and offered it to him. He gave Shen Qiao that expectant look again, like he was bracing himself, before Shen Qiao gingerly took the offered bite.

He chewed and then swallowed slowly. “I’ll… manage,” he said as Yan Wushi sat down next to him.

Yan Wushi found the stir-fry to be spiced to his taste level, and he finished his portion without much fuss. Watching Shen Qiao choke down his meal, sweat beading on his forehead in visible distress, was a highly entertaining bonus. Shen Qiao was quiet about his preferences, Yan Wushi had discovered, and would eat things he didn’t like rather than waste food. That was Shen Qiao really, wasn’t it? Graceful acceptance in the face of all the things that wanted to hurt him.

“I’ll be cleaning up this mess for ages,” Yan Wushi muttered in exasperation as he perused news sites and gossip rags on his tablet after dinner, Shen Qiao in his usual spot tucked into Yan Wushi’s side, reading a book. “Don’t wait up for me,” he said after noticing Shen Qiao yawn for a second time, pressing a kiss to his hair.

“Mm,” Shen Qiao hummed in agreement. “I should turn in, it’s been a tiring day. …Try to get a little sleep, please,” he requested, pausing to consider it for a moment before kissing the white at Yan Wushi’s temple, stretching and leaving for bed. Yan Wushi watched him go, gaze darkening.

Hours later, he stood over Shen Qiao’s sleeping form, sprawled across Yan Wushi’s pillow. He made an injured sound in his sleep, his face a picture of distress as he was seized by a nightmare, and Yan Wushi leaned in, brushing the hair out of his face, caressing Shen Qiao’s cheek.

“Lao Yan…” Shen Qiao murmured, still dead to the world, sighing and settling himself deeper into the bedding, looking so soft and so very inviting.

Something inside of Yan Wushi howled. He pulled back his hand as if he’d been burned, smothering whatever residual feelings he had left, resentful, and buried them as deep as they could go.

In that moment, Yan Wushi hated him.

-

Yan Wushi thought this unbearable tension would last a day, maybe two, before they had it out in a confrontation and he could ruin Shen Qiao and be done with it.

By the end of the week, with no fracturing in Shen Qiao’s calm demeanor beyond scrutinizing Yan Wushi with the occasional intensely searching look, the suspense of constantly circling Shen Qiao like a tiger waiting for the opportunity to strike was wearing on his nerves.

Perhaps Shen Qiao thought that hiding under Yan Wushi’s umbrella of influence to protect himself and his interests was a safer bet than going up against his enemies alone.

“Do you have an appointment near here?” Shen Qiao asked curiously, looking out the window onto the busy, unfamiliar street.

“I thought Ah-Qiao might help me with an errand,” Yan Wushi replied, downshifting in the traffic. This part of the city was mostly an entertainment district; densely packed shopping areas stacked on top of clubs and restaurants, taking up multiple floors of the surrounding buildings. They passed by a pay-by-the-hour hotel with animated hearts illuminated on the neon sign and a line of lottery kiosks, and Yan Wushi put on his blinker, pulling the car into a nondescript parking garage, descending several floors before finding an open space.

Shen Qiao felt uneasy and took Yan Wushi by the elbow, holding onto the fabric of his shirt and following him to the underground elevator.

It had been a miserable few days for Yan Wushi and Shen Qiao had barely seen him, the man climbing into bed at all hours only to tuck Shen Qiao under his arm and go to sleep.

Neither of them had broached the topic of that night or the following morning.

Shen Qiao had barely even processed any of it himself. He was hurt and confused, angry, but at least that he’d expected. Being on edge, looking for a confrontation, that seemed natural. He hadn’t considered the grief, mourning little details of a relationship that had never happened. And every time he attempted to work himself up about it, to shatter this horrible unspoken truce they had entered into, he couldn’t help reviewing the entirety of his acquaintance with Yan Wushi with deeply conflicted emotions, losing his nerve and changing the subject.

They took the elevator to an unnamed corporate suite on a floor somewhere in the middle of the high-rise, Yan Wushi giving his name to a pretty receptionist who allowed them to bypass the imposing front desk. There were no windows in the hallway, no light beyond the widely spaced brass wall sconces corresponding to each closed door.

“You haven’t even asked where I’m taking you, Ah-Qiao,” Yan Wushi said, breaking the silence between them.

Shen Qiao had been too lost in his thoughts to pay much attention to their surroundings, and didn’t immediately answer.

Yan Wushi brought them to a stop in front of a door at the end of the hallway, brushing his fingers against Shen Qiao’s cheek, tilting his face up. “How have you survived this long, putting so much faith in people you have no business trusting?”

“Yan Wushi? What are you-” Shen Qiao said, trying to shrug off his touch.

“Yan Wushi, Yan Wushi, what happened to Lao Yan?” he asked with a soft laugh. “Ah-Qiao, I’m so… disappointed. You let everyone around you walk all over you, use you in such vile, self serving ways. All I had to do was show the barest interest and you spent eight months eating out of my hand. So starved for affection that you’d settle for Yan Wushi’s? Isn’t it too humiliating to be so desperate?”

He pushed open the door, the firm hand on Shen Qiao’s back guiding him into the room in front of them.

It was the kind of space furnished by someone with the interior design sensibility of a spy thriller villain. Sitting on top of the glossy black tile flooring, an intimidating marble topped desk with brass accents was centered near the farthest wall from the door, severe modernist furniture surrounding a mahogany coffee table to the left, looking out at a view currently obscured by an automated black out shade. To the right of the room, an enormous bronze replica of Perseus Slaying Medusa sat on a narrow pedestal. Three of the walls were unadorned save for dark wood wainscoting, while the wall behind the desk was taken up entirely by a frankly enormous aquarium housing a two hundred kilogram circling bull shark.

“Yan Wushi, you have such a way with words. Truly, I’ve missed you,” Sang Jingxing said in an acknowledgement to what he’d overheard, turning his attention away from the aquarium glass in front of him, the water’s movement illuminating his silhouette in cool blue light. He walked toward the desk, taking out two tumblers. Chipping ice from a small bucket and then picking it up with a pair of specialty tongs, he added two cubes to one glass, before pouring two fingers of single malt whiskey into both. He moved the tumbler without ice to the edge of the desk as an unspoken offer to Yan Wushi, keeping the other for himself.

“I know about your current agreement with Yuan Xiuxiu, but I can’t think of anything I’ve done recently to merit a visit. Unless you’ve finally come to settle the personal score between us…?” Sang Jingxing asked, genuinely curious.

“Neither,” Yan Wushi replied, using the proprietary hand at the small of Shen Qiao’s back to propel him forward.

“Is this…” Sang Jingxing said, giving Shen Qiao a dismissive once over. “Supposed to capture my interest somehow?”

“This is Shen Qiao.”

Sang Jingxing’s eyes narrowed. “Qi Fengge’s…?  From Xuandu Enterprises? …What, did Yan Wushi finally learn how to share his toys?”

Yan Wushi held up the hard drive in his hand. “Qi Fengge’s body of work. Tan Yuanchun was surprisingly forthcoming about it’s contents when he was under the impression I knew where it was. Finished projects, plans, designs, schematics, research, unrealized ideas… And the contents of Xuandu’s entire R&D server. Accounts, itineraries, shipping manifests, parts, confidential suppliers. All of their manufacturing secrets. The sole copy of their next ten years are right here. If you were curious as to why they didn’t have a presence at Canton or Yiwu this year…” Yan Wushi tapped the plastic.

Shen Qiao’s stomach was twisting itself into knots.

“You want me to extort Xuandu? Yan Wushi, what an appalling suggestion. Criminal activity?” Sang Jingxing said in mock dismay. “I’m an honest business man.”

“Yu Ai is desperate to take Xuandu public.” Yan Wushi added. “If word got out that they’ve been lying about everything that’s ground to a halt since this went missing, that they have nothing… Xuandu would never recover. They’ll do anything to get this back. Xuandu’s competitors already smell blood in the water. If you’re looking for a buyer, you have options.”

“Fine, fine,” Sang Jingxing replied, waving a hand. “You have my attention.”

“More interestingly…” Yan Wushi continued. “You know Hulugu’s been looking for a foot in the door in Shanghai since that lover’s spat with Qi Fengge drove him out of the country twenty years ago. Duan Wenyang and Kunye have already given Xuandu substantial resources. If you were looking for a strong partner and leverage over Xuandu… Duan Wenyang’s door is certainly open.”

Sang Jingxing hummed in consideration. “Now tell me what this has to do with your charming little boytoy.”

The corner of Yan Wushi’s mouth twisted into a smile. “Shen Qiao is the only person who can decrypt any of it.”

Sang Jingxing gave Shen Qiao a look that would be pitying if he were capable of it. “Shen Qiao,” he drawled. “Yan Wushi is so fickle, isn’t he? Whatever did you do to end up in a room alone with two wolves like us, and no one to protect you?”

Shen Qiao, eyes closed, gently curled his hands into fists, but didn’t respond.

“You’ve been so naive, Ah-Qiao,” Yan Wushi said, finally directing his attention toward him. “Yu Ai, Qi Fengge’s friends on the board of directors. Was Qi Fengge’s body even cold before they set their sights on his legacy? Tan Yuanchun, Gu Hengbo… even little Yuan Ying wouldn’t stand up for you in the end.” He pulled Shen Qiao in close, nose brushing against his temple in a pseudo-affectionate gesture. “Yu Ai was right about one thing, if nothing else. Give your stake in Xuandu to me, Ah-Qiao. Transfer your shares, sign over ownership, let me load it up with debt and break it apart in front of them, piece by piece,” he murmured in his ear. “The profits are yours. Minus my consultation fees, of course,” he finished.

“You…” Shen Qiao laughed lightly, completely sick inside. “Naive? That’s fine, isn’t it? Without gullible people like me, how would Yan Wushi have his fun?”

Yan Wushi laughed. “Ah-Qiao, Ah-Qiao… Principled people like you are so rare. You should have died out with Qi Fengge’s generation. That world doesn’t exist anymore. You’ve been living by rules that were outdated before you even started playing the game.”

Sang Jingxing interrupted. “You’ll forgive me if I think this seems too generous of you, Yan Wushi. It took you a decade to crawl your way out of the hole that Cui Youwang buried you in. You barely survived,” Sang Jingxing reminded him with no little amusement, finishing his drink and rattling the ice in the bottom of the glass.

“And he didn’t. What a tragedy that must have been for you.” Yan Wushi replied, pleasant, as though he was expressing his condolences.

“What do I possibly have to offer in return?” Sang Jingxing asked.

“Taihua,” Yan Wushi replied. “Sign it over to me.”

Sang Jingxing laughed out loud. “Taihua? It’s an empty shell of a company, completely worthless. The last assets were liquidated while our dear mentor was still alive. I’ve only kept up the trademarks to commemorate your humiliation. Yan Wushi, don’t tell me you’ve become sentimental in your old age.”

“My possessions never stop belonging to me,” Yan Wushi stated. “It’s simply a matter of whether they’re useful enough to hold my present interest.”

Sang Jingxing casually waved a hand in the air, done with the conversation. “I’ll have my office send over the paperwork tomorrow. Poor Shen Qiao, how does it feel to be traded for a senile old man’s useless trash?”

Yan Wushi turned his attention back to Shen Qiao then. “You had fun, didn’t you? Playing house together?” Yan Wushi took his hand, rubbing a thumb over his knuckles. “It’s a shame that I became bored of you so easily. No hard feelings Ah-Qiao. After all,” he said, placing the hard drive in Shen Qiao’s hands and walking toward the door, “it’s just business.”

The latch clicked, and Shen Qiao was left alone with Sang Jingxing.

-

Sang Jingxing regarded him for long moments, seeming to enjoy the appraisal of his newest acquisition.

“Ah, Shen Qiao… a miserable old fuck like Yan Wushi truly doesn’t see your value,” he said, taking a lock of Shen Qiao’s hair and rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. “Join my team. If you play as nicely with me as you did with Yan Wushi… someone as fine as you? I’ll treat you as gently as you deserve.”

Shen Qiao didn’t move from the spot where Yan Wushi had left him, despondent.

Sang Jingxing put an arm around his shoulder. “Shen Qiao…” he murmured, lightly tracing his knuckles down Shen Qiao’s cheek, “I can be nice, or I can be mean, but either way you’re not leaving this building until I have what I want from you. Be a good boy for me, hmm? I don’t want to do this the hard way.”

Shen Qiao looked to the floor with the slightest of nods, Sang Jingxing noted with pleasure, leading him to the computer terminal behind the desk. Shen Qiao sat at the chair and placed the hard drive down gently. Moving Shen Qiao’s hair over one shoulder, Sang Jingxing settled his chin in the crook of Shen Qiao’s neck and shoulder. “Show me.”

Shen Qiao inhaled, calm. “Sang-xiansheng-”

“Don’t you mean Sang-laoban,” Sang Jingxing breathed against his ear.

“…Sang-laoban. There are failsafes I soldered inside the case before I closed it, I need a specialty screwdriver to open it and disable them before I can safely upload everything to your server.”

“Happy to provide,” Sang Jingxing said, shooting off a text before continuing to lay his hands on Shen Qiao’s person. He could see why he’d held Yan Wushi’s interest; the man really was fun to fuck with.

Within minutes there was a knock and one of Sang Jingxing’s subordinates passed a small electronics toolkit through the door.

Sang Jingxing resumed hanging all over Shen Qiao as he began his work. Removing four screws, he popped the plastic casing off the hard drive and gently pried off three chips, setting them aside. Extending a small cable, he plugged it into Sang Jingxing’s computer.

When a command screen popped up on the desktop, Shen Qiao began typing.

“Ah ah, turn off the privacy settings, I want to see,” Sang Jingxing commanded.

Shen Qiao nodded, changing his settings with a few clicks before typing out a long series of letters and numbers.

“Did you memorize all of this?”

“The pass code changes by the minute. It’s connected to an equation that corresponds to the date and time; you plug in the time, day, month, and year to their respective places and then solve before the minute changes.” Shen Qiao responded gently, brow furrowed in concentration. “The correct entry is the full question and- ah,” he said, keying in the last few digits and pressing enter. “The answer.”

The password protection disappeared, opening a home folder. The only thing in it was a file titled shanhetongbei.exe.

“Where’s the rest of it,” Sang Jingxing asked, suspicious, as he toyed with the collar of Shen Qiao’s shirt, flicking open the top buttons.

“Once I execute this command,” Shen Qiao explained placidly, “it will start downloading the permissions to give you access to my private accounts. I’ll need to send you a link through your email to add you to my server.”

It took a few minutes to install shanhetongbei.exe, and for Shen Qiao to sign into and out of his own email address and send the files from his cloud server to Sang Jingxing. He moved the chair aside, gesturing to the desktop.

“Sang-laoban, you have to sign in and click the link.”

Sang Jingxing stepped away from Shen Qiao to complete his instructions.

“…What is it doing,” he asked, squinting at the screen, where a number of windows were opening and closing, completing the installation. Sang Jingxing attempted to press buttons on the keyboard to get the machine to respond.

Shen Qiao placed the chips he’d taken from the hard drive and the tool kit into his inner jacket pocket, slipping the snake shaped ice pick out of Sang Jingxing’s expensive bar set. “Installing ransomeware across your entire network,” he replied with no inflection, taking the ice pick in his hand and stabbing the exposed circuit board and platters multiple times in succession, hard enough to puncture through the hard drive and chip the marble surface of the desk.

The moment between Sang Jingxing’s shock and his understanding was enough time for Shen Qiao.

“You fucking bitch,” Sang Jingxing snarled, lunging across the desk.

Shen Qiao attempted to dodge, but Sang Jingxing was faster, catching him by the braid and toppling the chair as Sang Jingxing landed two punches to his face. Shen Qiao crawled across the floor, attempting to roll away, but Sang Jingxing had the advantage. Wrapping the braid around his fist, Sang Jingxing slammed his face against the desk, pain exploding across his vision. “Shen Qiao, I warned you about the hard way,” he said, shoving a knee between Shen Qiao’s legs as he struggled underneath Sang Jingxing.

Shen Qiao managed to slide himself off the desk by pushing backward and dropping his weight to one side. Hooking an ankle around Sang Jingxing’s feet, he swept both legs out from under him, sending them both reeling backward to the floor. Shen Qiao landed better this time, scrabbling for purchase on the smooth black tile, but got himself to standing and made it halfway to the door.

Sang Jingxing vaulted the desk and got a hold on the back of his shirt before getting in a few solid hits to the chest. Shen Qiao, already winded, couldn’t block the knee to the stomach that followed, and Sang Jingxing got a hand around his throat, pinning him against the base of the large Perseus statue one handed. “What was your thought process here, Shen Qiao, making yourself worthless to me?” he said smoothly, squeezing his hand and watching Shen Qiao struggle. “That’s always the problem with Yan Wushi’s investments,” he chuckled, leaving behind a streak of blood as he wiped his nose and mouth with the back of his hand. “They depreciate in value so quickly.”

Shen Qiao lifted his leg around Sang Jingxing’s body, kicking out for purchase, only to meet the wall behind him.

“Yan Wushi appreciates dramatic gestures. I’ll send him one of your hands as a souvenir before I feed the rest of you to Huo Xijing,” he said through clenched teeth, blood and saliva speckling against Shen Qiao’s face.

Shen Qiao balanced his back against the narrow pedestal, placing both feet against the wall and pushing with all of his strength.

The base tilted, sending the sculpture on a direct trajectory with the aquarium.

“No!!” Sang Jingxing shrieked, Shen Qiao hitting the underside of Sang Jingxing’s wrist with an open hand to break the hold on his neck, diving for the front of the desk.

The crack of plexiglass was the loudest sound in the room.

The tank exploded outward, large, intact shards of acrylic slamming into Sang Jingxing and knocking him into unconsciousness as the water propelled him over the floor.

The weight of the marble desk blocked the brunt of the debris, barring some shards that embedded themselves into the arm Shen Qiao had thrown up to protect his face. He was somersaulted across the room, back slamming the door open as thousands of litres of water emptied out into the rest of the suite and escaped through walls and light fixtures to flood the floors directly below.

Shen Qiao’s back was slammed upside down into the wall outside the door by the force of the water, legs in the air, holding his breath until the it receded enough that he could shakily stand on the saturated hall carpet.

He limp-jogged down the hallway, soaking wet, coughing and wiping salt water out of his eyes. The receptionist, who was now standing on top of her desk, dumbly watched him stumble out of the suite. Passing a number of Sang Jingxing’s men as shouts sounded from inside the office, he made for the fire escape.

Bypassing the stairs entirely, he swung over the railing and dropped, catching himself on another railing every third floor or so. The adrenaline was overwriting the pain he was feeling at present, but he had no idea how long that would last.

His feet hit the concrete floor signifying the lobby level, and he burst out of the emergency door with a slam, drawing attention from office workers walking through to the elevator bank. He tried to act casually, but it was difficult when he was wearing a suit drenched with water, blood from the wounds he’d sustained fighting off Sang Jingxing painting his forehead and left cheek in blooming crimson.

He dabbed at his face self consciously with the back of his sleeve. The security desk at least was crowded, fielding angry calls from multiple floors, and Shen Qiao walked by unnoticed, accidentally bumping into a woman with a mumbled apology as he pushed through the front door and made it to the street level.

Bai Rong had been distracted by a strange login request on her phone for the last ten minutes, not noticing the man walking in her direction across the lobby. After they made contact, his apologetic muttering gave her pause. “Was that Shen-lang?” she wondered aloud, whirling around in recognition. He was already gone.

-

Shen Qiao made it two blocks before pulling himself up another fire escape, unlatching the outer door to the second level of a clothing manufacturer’s bulk exports office. Crouching in the stairwell, Shen Qiao popped the case off of his waterlogged phone, peeling two damp thousand renminbi bills out of the back.

Entering the building, he walked up and down the stacks of containers until he found an unbranded sweatshirt, sneakers and pants in his size, grabbing the first baseball cap and face mask he saw and approaching an administrative desk.

The young woman manning it was eating her lunch, startled into dropping her gaifan back into its container. “C-can I help you…?”

Shen Qiao gestured to the items in his arms, peeling off a bill and setting it in front of her. “Is this alright?” he asked softly, trying not to look threatening.

She looked at the items, and then at Shen Qiao in disbelief. “Gege, we don’t really do that…”

Shen Qiao gave her a truly pathetic look. “Please…”

She looked around to see if anyone was watching, before sliding the bill toward herself and placing it into an open accounts folder in a drawer. “The bathrooms are back that way,” she gestured with a nod.

Shen Qiao bowed his head in thanks and all but sprinted toward the bathrooms, locking himself inside. He cleaned up with an available stack of paper towels, emptying his pockets and laying everything out on the ledge of the sink. Taking a first aid kit from the wall, he plucked the shards of plexi out of his arm and wrapped it in gauze, taping a bandage over where his forehead was still bleeding sluggishly.

Shucking off his clothes into a pile, he pulled on the white joggers and tightened them around his waist, tying it off with a bow. He shoved his feet into the pair of light blue and white sneakers, pulling the pale blue hoodie over his head and attempting to pull it down. Looking in the mirror, he realized he’d taken it from the wrong bin; the ribbed hem ended just above his navel. He tugged at it again in frustration, before looking heavenward and breathing out a heavy sigh.

He pulled on the cotton face mask and tucked his hair up into the light blue cap— a sitting moomintroll embroidered across the front with a white bow sewn to the top of the closure— and shoved the rest of his possessions, including the toolkit and somehow Sang Jingxing’s ice pick, into the pockets of the joggers.

Gathering his wet clothes, he nodded at the wide eyed girl behind the desk on his way out, tugging the hoodie down over his stomach again self consciously. He stuck close to crowds and populated areas, head down, recognizing some of Sang Jingxing’s associates talking heatedly on their phones on the sidewalk across the street from a line of taxis.

Shen Qiao dumped his clothes in the trash outside the metro station and loaded up a smart card with cash, shoving the change into the cropped hoodie. Finding an open maintenance door in an isolated part of the tunnel, Shen Qiao slipped his phone between the hinges and pushed, snapping it in half. He tossed half the phone under the tracks and got on the next arriving train, managing to find a space against the wall to lean on in the crowded passenger car. Body shaking, he shoved the other half of the phone under a seat as he folded his arms in on himself and closed his eyes.